Thousands of children across Australia may be at risk after a loophole for dodgy childcare centre operators to buy businesses without a safety audit.

There has been a product safety recall from Product Safety Australia regarding the Cotton On Kids— Baby Summer Bundler Sleeping Bag, purchased between 1 October 2017 - 8 December 2017.

There has been a product safety recall from Product Safety Australia for the VTech Baby Pack & Go Travel Mobile and VTech Baby Shake and Sing Elephant Rattle

From the 01 Oct, a new National Regulation will be put in place that will give Educators the right to overrule parents requests for their child's sleep arrangements to reduce the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).  

As part of a $53 million Mental Health in Education program, announced by the Turnbull government, three-year-olds in childcare and students from preschool and kindergarten upwards will be taught about suicide awareness and mental health.

Early Childhood Australia CEO Sam Page said helping to develop resilient children who were aware of their emotions and mental health could have a real impact in preventing them from being at risk of suicide later on in life.

“If we teach all children how to name their emotions, how to feel sad and how to recover from that ... then we are more likely to have reduced instances of depression and that in turn will reduce the number of children trying to suicide,” Ms Page said.

While the word “suicide” won’t be used directly with three-year-olds, discussions around feelings of “not wanting to be here” or “wanting to die” could be addressed in the right context.

Health Minister Greg Hunt will announce teachers from childcare through to Year 12 will be provided additional mental health and suicide training in their university degrees or VET education.

Those already teaching will undergo additional online and face-to-face training to better improve the discussion with children around the issue.

The program will be run by Beyond Blue in partnership with Early Childhood Australia and Headspace.

It will begin early next year with two-thirds of all schools to be involved — 2000 Early Learning Services and 6000 schools — by June 2019.

Reference:
Rudd, Matilda (2017), Three Year Olds Discuss Suicide Awareness, Daily Mail Australia

Parents who do not wish to vaccinate their children on conscientious grounds are banned from having their children enrolled in child care centres in NSW. 

There is an urgent recall regarding EpiPen 300 Batches, following consultation with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). 

The urgent recall is for 4 batches of EpiPen 300 with the following batch numbers and an expiry of Apr 17:

• 5FA665
• 5FA6651 
• 5FA6652 
• 5FA6653 

No other batches of EpiPen, including the EpiPen Jr 150 microgram version, are thought to be affected, the TGA said.

This recall is due to the potential that these devices may contain a defective part that may result in the device failing to activate or requiring increased force to activate.

If the EpiPen fails to activate it may result in life threatening adverse events as the underlying anaphylaxis will not be treated.

If you have an Epipen with one of the above batch numbers you will need to replace it with a new one as soon as possible by returning it to your pharmacist, who will replace it with an EpiPen 300 from a different batch FREE OF CHARGE. 

For more information please read the following: EpiPen 300 Recall

Water beads are causing serious concerns and parents are being warned of the potentially deadly risk these pose to children.

Since January 01 2016, there has been alot of talk regarding the new No Jab, No Play legislation for early childhood services.Under this new law a child cannot attend a service until acceptable vaccination documentation is provided. 

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has conducted testing on a range of wax crayons and identified traces of asbestos in a number of crayon products.