Welcome to our course! We have designed the content and the context of this course to consider the most important issues for practitioners when implementing all things relating to health and safety in a childcare setting. We will focus on COMPLIANCE, BEST PRACTICE and EVIDENCE FOR OFSTED INSPECTION. The course has been written for those who work in nurseries, pre-schools, out of school providers and childminders and is underpinned by the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework. To help practitioners to recognise this area of legislation we have colour coded all content quoting the EYFS in red. It is presented with a mixture of written text, video clips, scenarios and quizzes. It not only draws upon our own extensive experience as practitioners, inspectors and trainers but also uses peer learning from colleagues currently working in the early years sector.

This course features film clips an area manager of a group of day-care settings and takes a look at how they manage and implement their health and safety requirements in keeping with legislation and in particular the Early Years Foundation Stage. The manager tells us of effective management systems and practice that supports this. We also feature a childminder who is passionate about providing children with risky play opportunities in the outdoors. We hear about why it is important for young children to experience risk in play and ask her how she works with the children to help them manage their own risks. In addition to all of this we provide links to external websites that help you to piece together the bigger picture and help make learning connections to supplement the course further. We have even provided you with helpful downloadable templates and tools that support health and safety and risk assessment too!

We hope that you find the course helpful and that we can further support your learning in this area of practice.