Crèche guidelines

Recommended Best Practice: Crèche Ministry in churches The following information is intended to assist churches in facilitating a crèche ministry:

Duty of care

A crèche service must provide safe care for children while their parents are participating in a church activity. The crèche service should only be available to children of participants or members. Crèche providers and their volunteers have a duty of care to the children attending the crèche. A duty of care is a duty to take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions that you could reasonably foresee would be likely to injure a person for whom you have a responsibility, or some relationship towards.

To fulfil a duty of care a service provider might consider whether:

• all children are well supervised and protected from harm
• all furniture and equipment is safe, well maintained and in good repair
• all gates, fencing and doors are secure and child-proof
• there is a sign-in-sign-out procedure in place an appropriate toileting policy is in place and this has been clearly communicated to the parents and guardians of the children
• emergency procedures are developed and communicated clearly to crèche volunteers
• safe emergency exits are accessible at all times
• emergency procedures are developed and communicated clearly to crèche volunteers
• Duty of care may be breached if you or a volunteer behaves or acts unreasonably
• Failure to act may also constitute a breach of duty of care. A breach of duty of care means legal action could be taken against the crèche provider

Other helpful tips are:

• Always have two crèche volunteers on duty and make sure at least one of them has a mobile phone with them
• If junior helpers (under 18s) volunteer never leave them alone with children or allow them to take children to the toilet
• Best practice with toileting is to text parents to take their child to the toilet OR alternatively send an adult crèche volunteer to the toilets with 2 children ensuring the other adult volunteer is never alone with only 1 child while this happens
• Best practice with toileting is the use of a consent form which states how toileting will be handled. Ask parents to sign this. If parents choose not to sign the consent form then they must always be texted to collect their child for the toilet

Finally – all volunteers commencing working with children for the first time in the CRCA are required to undergo the Volunteer Approval Process and attend Basic Training before volunteering.