Early childhood services must have policies and procedures to meet their legislative requirements under the National Quality Framework or the
Education and Care Services Act 2013 (ECS Act). Approved providers are responsible for ensuring adequate policies and procedures are developed, implemented and regularly reviewed.
Well-developed and implemented policies and procedures help to ensure children’s health, safety and wellbeing.
It is a requirement under regulations 168 and 169 of the National Regulations for approved providers to ensure that services have in place a range of
policies and procedures. It is an offence under regulation 170 for an approved provider to fail to take reasonable steps to ensure that the nominated supervisors, staff members, family day care educators (if applicable) and volunteers at the service follow these required policies and procedures.
Robust policies and procedures set the expectations of staff and the families who attend the service. They help new and existing staff to understand the service’s processes and practices, aid in decision-making and ensure consistency across all areas of service delivery.
The department, as the Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, will assess a selection of a service’s policies and procedures at the service approval application stage. If assessed as 'adequate to ensure the safe operation of the service and best possible outcomes for children', approved providers have the ongoing responsibility to ensure:
- services are actively implementing their policies and procedures through systems that ensure staff are regularly trained (this includes induction) and follow the service-specific policies and procedures
- an ongoing review of policies and procedures as part of quality improvement at least annually or to meet new legislative requirements. A review of policies and procedures is also good practice following an incident, complaint or event.
Approved providers are responsible for ensuring that their staff follow their policies and procedures, and they must take reasonable steps to meet this obligation under regulation 170 of the Education and Care Services National Regulation. The Queensland Regulatory Authority has published comprehensive guidance to clarify how approved providers can meet their obligations under regulation 170 by following
6 reasonable steps (PDF, 579KB).
References
- National Regulation 168 Education and Care Service must have policies and procedures
- National Regulation 169 Additional policies and procedures—Family day care service
- National Regulation 170 Policies and procedures to be followed
- National Regulation 171 Policies and procedures to be kept available
- National Regulation 172 Notification of change to policies or procedures
- Element 7.1.2 Systems are in place to manage risk and enable the effective management and operation of a quality service
- Element 7.1.3 Roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, and understood, and support effective decision-making and operation of the service
- Element 7.2.1 There is an effective self-assessment and quality improvement process in place
Resources
'With policies and procedures, we're able to have everyone on the same page of the expectations for our centre, and it allows us to challenge each of our peers to make sure the educational environment for our children is safe and up to our standards of education.'
See the
policies and procedures: not just a tick and flick page for more information. Watch the video below.