Under the Education and Care Services National Regulations, early childhood education and care (ECEC) services must have adequate policies and procedures in place to effectively and appropriately care for a child with a health care need, allergy or other relevant medical condition (regulation 168).

Service policies and procedures form the basis of medical management practice and may outline what best practice looks like at your service.

Medical conditions policy

Regulation 90 outlines what to include in policies and procedures to effectively manage the health and safety of children with medical conditions. A service’s medical conditions policy must set out how the service will:

• manage medical conditions
• keep service staff (including volunteers) informed and updated about the management of medical conditions
• complete procedures for children with health care needs.

Regulation 90 also requires that children with individual medical needs have a:

• medical management plan (provided by the child’s parent)
• risk minimisation plan (developed in consultation with the family)
• communication plan (documenting the who, what, when, where and how to ensure messages are clear, consistent, and documented appropriately).

ASCIA Action Plans meet the requirements of regulation 90 as a medical management plan and should guide your immediate response and treatment of allergy and anaphylaxis. 

ASCIA Action plans should be regularly reviewed to ensure they are up to date. Set a review date for each child's action plan. While there is no set time frame for how frequently plans should be reviewed, every 12 months is ideal for where there is a change to a child's circumstance.

Staff should clearly understand medical management plans, risk minimisation plans and communications plans, and how they apply to individual children and the management of the child’s medical condition. Services must ensure all 3 of these documents are available at the service where the child is being educated and cared for. It is best practice for these documents to be stored on the child’s file and easily accessible in the child’s room by service staff.

Keeping staff informed

Staff members, including casual and volunteers, must be informed about the service’s medical management policies and procedures.

Services should use induction processes to familiarise educators with these policies and procedures. Ensure all staff know about the medical conditions of any children enrolled that day, including where to find their management plans and medications in case of emergency. Use team meetings to review communication plans to ensure practices are consistent.

Occasional medication requirements

Educators may need to administer short-term use of medications, such as antibiotics, to children. Whenever short-term medication is administered while a child is in care, services must meet the following requirements.

First aid qualifications

Regulations require that at least one staff member with appropriate first aid, anaphylaxis management and emergency asthma training is immediately available at all times (regulation 136).

Consider your educators’ first aid qualifications when planning your rosters. Having multiple staff members who hold these qualifications working with children provides a safer environment for children, as more educators are able to respond in an emergency.

Resources

• Anaphylaxis and Allergy Prevention and Management
• Asthma Regulatory Guidance Note (PDF 85 KB)
• ACECQA’s Dealing with Medical Conditions in Children Policy guidelines (PDF 240 KB)
• ‘Topic 6: Unpacking Regulation 90 - medical conditions policy’ of the OSHC Medical Management Toolbox
• Meal checkpoint Resource (PDF 36 KB) and Meal Checkpoint Resource: How to guide (395 KB)