Nursery sleep regulations???

[MissDora]

Hi everyone! I work in the nursery and I want to find out if all the children have to sleep in cots, I have some under ones who hate the cot room and sleep well on the mats in the room, my director is adamant that this is not allowed by the department unless they are transitioning to the toddler room. Any info/feedback would be much appreciated!

[Lorina]

I had a look at the national Regulations and this is what it states -

Sleep and Rest

(1) The approved provider of an education and care service must take reasonable steps to ensure that the needs for sleep and rest of children being educated and cared for by the service are met, having regard to the ages, development stages and individual needs of the children.

So, according to my understanding of what I read in the National Regulations, if you are meeting an individual child's needs by allowing them to sleep on a mat then it should be acceptable. It doesn't say anywhere throughout the Regulation that all children have to sleep in cots while in the nursery.

Hope this helps,

,
L.A

[saz_123]

Hi,
I'm the nursery group leader in my centre as well I have several children who don't like cots. A couple sleep on beds and one who is used to sleeping with their mum likes to sleep in a rocker. According to my director, as long as the parent is okay with this and you can explain why they are there its no problems.

[MissDora]

Thanks for the reply, I agree with you I also thought that if I could explain valid reasons as to why they are on mats it was acceptable. However my director has told me all the children must sleep in cots, I even had a few parents put in writing their wishes and my director still refuses. its such a challenge to have all 8 babies well rested and content when some just flat out hate sleeping in the cot room!

[Angelic8888]

Hi,
I am new here and thoroughly enjoying reading what is happening at other Centres.
Here is my Scenario, I would love to hear a few thoughts from others.
I work I. A Toddler Room, we have 6 rooms at our Centre.
My room is up to just over 3 years old.
I have my Diploma but am not the Room Leader, we have up to 16 children.
I would like to talk a out our "Rest Time"
We provide a mattress and sheets for all of our children.
Our Centre likes to follow the parents requests.
So we have differing opinions going on our Room at the moment.
Following the Parents wishes, we have Sleep Restrictions for some of our children, meaning that if the Parent want their child to sleep for 30-40 minutes, that we have to wake up their child after they have slept for that amount of time
This is despite the child taking ages to wake up and continually falling back to sleep.
This is heart wrenching and I personally feel terrible doing this, as I am under the believe that the children come first.
But the reasoning is that their Child won't go to sleep until later than when the parent wants.
To me this is not catering for the child's needs but for the Parents needs.
I have been told too that they are not our children so we have to follow the parents requests.
We even have a couple of children whom are not allowed to sleep at all but to only rest, despite the child being tired.
If they fall asleep on their own accord we have to wake the child after a very small sleep.
These children do get tired and do not. Ope with the afternoon.
As well as they do not rest quietly and we need to have one carer to be with the child as they become noisy and disruptive and disturb our other. Hidden, Generally we only have two staff during this time, under the roof ratio.
And we have to do the bookwork, clean the room and toilet the children during this time.
The Room Leader is happy with all this as is the Centre Director.
What do others think.