Carol Stovold Quality Kidz qualitykidz.co.nz

By Carol Stovold, managing director, Quality Kidz and president of NZ Home-based Early Childhood Education Association

Around the home and section, some dangers are obvious – others are just as dangerous, but easily overlooked. To help minimise child injuries around the home, a few precautionary measures can be taken to make the children's environment as safe as possible.
Installing a few simple safety products will help prevent accidents happening to the children. Quality Kidz provides a home safety service to parents, which results in a full report on how they can keep their home safe for babies, infants and toddlers. There is, however, no substitute for proper adult supervision, which is the best way to ensure children's safety.

With winter coming on, it is time to begin to check your home for heating safety. Common items to look at are:

• Do the fires and heaters have appropriate child-safe guards?

• Are fire and heater guards securely attached to the wall, cool to touch and high enough so children cannot climb or fall over them?
• Do they prevent access to the fire or naked flame?
• Is a guard used with gas heaters?
• Are the electrical heaters safely stored as to not present as a hazard?
• Do they heat up? (Become hot to touch or have a naked element). If so they will need a guard.
• Are all heating appliances, including gas heaters, checked regularly for faults?
• Is the chimney cleaned yearly?
• Are matches and lighters stored out of sight and reach?

One of the most overlooked dangers in a home is heating and indoor temperatures. The World Health Organisation suggests minimum guideline temperatures of winter warmth should be 18-24 degrees. Research shows that taking steps to insure heating is at the recommended temperatures, homes are adequately insulated and soft floor covering is available for non-mobile and crawling infants, can make significant improvement in the health of adults and children, with fewer GP visits and admissions to hospital for respiratory conditions per winter season.

Infants and children are considered to be particularly vulnerable; their immune systems and lungs are under developed until about the age of six and their body mass is very different to that of an adult. Babies, for example, don't have a well-developed ability to regulate their own body temperatures and often haven't learned to shiver. They also have a much higher body surface area to weight ratio, so even a little exposed skin loses a lot of heat.

This makes them much more vulnerable to not only cold, but other bugs and illnesses that older children may successfully manage themselves. Parents with young babies and toddlers in large group environments need to ensure that the childcare services they may be attending, have very strict procedures which minimise or prevent the risk of exposure to winter illness. Home-based childcare often sees an increased enrolment of babies and infants during winter periods, with parents choosing to place their children into smaller groups of four children or less to reduce the exposure risks.

If you would like to book a home safety check contact Quality Kidz and mention this article to receive a complementary 10 per cent discount.

Next Week: Teaching children manners