Assessing Indiana’s Health and Safety in Early Care and Education Programs: Identifying Areas for Improvement

Abstract

The objective of this study is to describe the key National Health and Safety Standards (NHS) met in early care and education (ECE) programs in Indiana and to establish reliability for the Indiana Health and Safety Checklist. The Indiana Health and Safety Checklist, modified from the California Childcare Health Program's Health and Safety Checklist, includes 87 items and 11 subscales. It was completed in 2 h by trained child care health consultants in 82 ECE programs to assess the number of key NHS met. The 82 ECE programs met the majority of NHS items. Thirteen items were not met in more than 50% of the programs. The items with the lowest compliance were emergency food supplies, children's hand washing, special health care plans, cleaning and sanitizing counters, and impact surfaces under playground equipment. The Indiana Health and Safety Checklist had moderate internal reliability for 6 of the 9 subscales analyzed. ECE programs strive to provide high quality care and the programs met the majority of NHS on the checklist. The Checklist is a reliable instrument that helped identify health and safety gaps and thus, identified the targeted interventions for child care health consultation.

Investigating child care food safety culture and barriers & motivators to safe food handling practices

“…Griffith and Redmond (2009) reported that food safety was not just a microbial problem, but it also contains a behavioral component. (Alkon & Cole, 2012). These results contradict previously reported finding of food preparation and eating areas.…”

“…Child care employees play a crucial role in children's health and safety (Bronfenbrenner, 1998), and must actively work to prevent FBI outbreaks (Alkon & Cole, 2012). suggested prevention of infection within a child care facility could be categorized as follows: 1) antimicrobial treatment and/or prophylaxis; 2) exclusion or cohorting of ill/infected children; 3)…”

National Health and Safety Standards: Family Child Care Homes Compared With Child Care Centers

“…The strongest internal consistency in the present study was for emergencies, indoor and outdoor equipment and furnishings, and nutrition. In an earlier version of the Health and Safety Checklist, most of the subscales had moderate to strong internal consistency, and the lowest internal consistency was in the nutrition and equipment and furnishings subscales (Alkon et al, 2016;Alkon & Cole, 2012).…”

“…Although we know that handwashing is the best method of prevention for spreading disease, handwashing was the most frequently rated practice that was not met for staff and children in this study and other studies. In a study of 82 child care programs in IN, only 33% of the programs posted proper handwashing procedures, 74% of the centers had preschool-age children washing their hands properly before eating, and 69% of the centers had staff washing their hands before food preparation or service (Alkon & Cole, 2012). In another study of 37 child care centers in 3 states, 38% of the centers posted proper handwashing procedures, 76% of the centers had preschool-age children washing their hands properly before eating, and 78% of the centers had staff washing their hands before food preparation or service (Alkon et al, 2016).…”

Effects of nurse‐led child health service in child‐care centers: A survey study

“…Some health and safety needs identified were health and safety staff training, medical plans for children with special health-care needs, and follow-up on positive screening tests (Alkon et al, 2010). Early care and education centers had high compliance with emergency preparedness, but low compliance with handwashing routines (Alkon & Cole, 2012;Alkon, To, Wolff, Mackie, & Bernzweig, 2008). Concerns regarding high risk of infectious illnesses have also been identified (Shope, 2014).…”