Early Years Practitioner Guidance

Exploring and taking risks are an important part of a child’s learning and development and it is natural for children to want to explore and take risks to test their abilities. To support children to feel safe and be safe in their learning environment, you should provide an environment with well-managed opportunities for risk taking and take precautions by removing hazards that are not easy for children to identify.

Some examples of well managed opportunities for risk taking include:

1. Building a tower of blocks until it is so tall it falls down.
2. Climbing to the top of outdoors climbing equipment.

Your role is to support children to develop the skills they need to decide what is not safe and what they should do when they are faced with a risk, and to provide a secure base and safe haven from which they feel comfortable and confident in making those decisions. 

 

Risk assessment 

To effectively manage risk, everybody in your early years setting, including parents and carers, and any other visitors, should be equipped to take responsibility for their own and other’s safety. Your early years setting has responsibility for the safety of all activities and there should be a policy  to ensure the health and safety of all children. This includes eSafety and adherence to any regional or national regulations. It is your responsibility to understand and conform to your early years setting’s policy.

It is important to understand the difference between a hazard and a risk.

A learning space is an indoor space in your setting, an outdoor space in your setting or a space outside of your setting that you might visit. To assess your learning spaces, activities and resources, you should follow these steps:

1. Identify any hazards (What is it? Where is it?)
2. Decide who might be harmed and how.
3. Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions (Can I get rid of the risks altogether? If not, how can I control them?)
4. Record your findings and implement them.
5. Monitor and review (Are my actions working? If not, what is the best new solution?)

Creating and maintaining a safe learning environment

It is impossible to highlight all the possible hazards and risks in your individual setting, especially when exploration is an important element of children’s learning and development. However, the list below provides general guidance on some of the things you should consider.

Empowering children to keep themselves and others safe

You should support children in developing the skills to identify and evaluate risks to their own safety and strategies to protect themselves. As children move through the early years stages, they should also further develop a sense of responsibility for themselves and for others. There are learning statements in the Personal, Social and Emotional Development curriculum area to reflect this.

Here are examples of how you can support children in developing responsibility for their own and others’ safety:

• Talk together about hazards, risks and safe behaviour, including generally in your setting, during particular activities and when using particular resources such as scissors.
• Ensure children understand the reasons behind your safety rules.
• Give children feedback on the safety of behaviours, including praise for safe behaviours.
• Encourage and support children to tidy up after themselves without prompting. For example, stick picture labels on storage to encourage children to put things away that might otherwise become trip hazards. Make paper towels, or similar, available so children can mop up small spills independently.
• Encourage children to alert an adult to a hazard if they are unable to remedy it. For example, a big spillage that they are unable to mop up with a paper towel.

In early years, children should have opportunities to observe animals in their natural environment. This should be done responsibly and not in a way that could cause:

• distress or harm to the animals
• distress or harm to the children
• damage to the environment.

If animals are brought into early years settings then you must ensure that any national, regional and early years setting regulations are followed regarding animal welfare as well as the safety of your children. In all circumstances, you must ensure all animals have:

• a suitable environment, including being housed with, or apart from, other animals (as required for the species)
• a suitable diet
• the opportunity to exhibit normal behaviour patterns
• protection from pain, injury, suffering and disease.

eSafety and the digital learning environment

There are many positives to using digital technologies within an educational setting, but they also pose unique risks. Therefore, eSafety needs to be an integral part any child protection and safeguarding policy and procedures. eSafety refers to support for practitioners and children to ensure they are aware of potential dangers, risks and the actions to take if there are concerns, especially where online digital platforms, software and technologies are being used and accessed.

Some considerations around eSafety are:

• At a centre level, eSafety needs to incorporate ongoing risk assessments to focus on potential issues, looking at internal technological infrastructure and considering whether appropriate systems are in place for filtering and monitoring.
• Your centre’s eSafety provision needs to be part of your approach to teaching and learning. You should provide opportunities for children to consider their own behaviour when using digital technologies and the impact their actions can have on others.
• eSafety should be an integral part of your safeguarding and child protection support for your practitioners and learners.
• Parents and carers need to be fully engaged with promoting eSafety within social and home settings by providing the correct support, resource and guidance.

Cambridge recommends that all centres have an acceptable use policy which describes in detail what practitioners and children should and should not do once they are given access to the centre’s computer network. If concerns arise, practitioners should follow the policy, including contacting local child protection and law enforcement agencies if appropriate.

Children should feel safe and be safe in their learning environment. eSafety is one element of a safe learning environment. It is important that children consider the physical safety of themselves and others, and the devices they use, in your early years setting and at home.

You can model eSafety in your early years setting by making sure that:

• cables cannot be accidently pulled, tripped over or trodden on
• plug sockets are not overloaded, even in situations where a single workstation contains several components (computer, screen, printer) that require a power source
• seat heights are adjustable, and footrests are provided, to ensure that each child can sit with their screen at eye level.

Children need to understand that they are working with electronic devices that are fragile and potentially dangerous if they are not used with care. You should display visual safety messages in areas where computers are used. The messages could be in the form of pictures and highlight, for example:

• not walking around while using digital devices
• keeping liquids away from devices
• being aware of cables
• appropriate treatment and handling of devices
• the importance of taking rest breaks away from screens.

All these messages should be covered by your centre’s acceptable use policy and be reinforced as children progress through the Cambridge Early Years Programme.