When we think about health and safety in child care, it’s often related to hazards we can see. For instance, are providers and children washing their hands properly? Have cleaners and medications been locked away? Are smoke and carbon monoxide detectors present and functional? These are things that can affect children’s wellbeing right now.
At Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA), we’ve been thinking about health and safety in a new way. To create safe and healthy child care programs, we need to consider both hazards we can see and those we cannot. That means thinking about children’s health and wellness right now and in the future.
In the first post of this blog series, we gave you tips to reduce the use of toxic chemicals in child care programs. All April, we will be exploring environmental health— hazardous materials, parking lot safety, safe facilities — from this new point of view. And we offer new ideas about how to avoid hidden hazards and promote children’s lifelong health.
Child care providers have a lot to consider when choosing a site for their program. There’s cost, location, suitable indoor and outdoor space, and so on. The issue of environmental contamination may not occur to them. There may be no visible problem or telltale smell, so it’s easy to overlook. But children deserve safe spaces to learn and play. Child care providers must make sure their facilities are free of environmental hazards.
Here’s why:
Contaminants in the air, soil and water can harm child and staff health. Young children often play on the ground, which makes exposure to environmental hazards more likely and more dangerous. Many environmental hazards, including lead and pesticides, are bad for children’s growing brains and bodies. Exposure to these toxins can set children up for a lifetime of health problems. Child care staff are also at risk. Particularly those who are pregnant, have chronic health conditions or live in a family child care home with high levels of contamination.
Safe siting in child care means thinking about environmental hazards before choosing to open a facility on a certain site. Experts in safe siting recommend that child care providers ask four important questions before selecting a child care site:
When thinking about safe siting, remember that environmental hazards are not distributed evenly. Communities with low incomes and communities of color are disproportionately located in areas with high rates of environmental contamination. These communities often have limited political power or access to resources for hazard removal. We need ensure that the communities most at risk, have funding to make their neighborhoods and facilities safer for children.
Child Care Aware® of America is teaming up with the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN) to spread the word about safe siting in child care and highlight opportunities for CCR&Rs to get involved. Join us for a webinar highlighting the Choosing Safe Places for Early Care and Education initiative and hear from a CCR&R in New Jersey about their experience helping providers keep kids safe from environmental hazards.