Two carers in room at all times?

[missouri]

Question, should there be two carer's in a room at all times? Example, two to three year old room, ten children in room, two carers, children are playing carer needs to use the bathroom, carer goes to bathroom[gone five minutes or so] other carer on her own with children. I was always told there had to be two carers at all times with children, be it one child or ten children, under the child protection rules. I am in NSW.
I know its in my bookwork but the rules seen to be changing so much, I don't know if this rule is out of date or if not.
Can anyone tell me please where I will find an up todate [2014 at least] for NSW,
Thank you

[Lorina]

Hi,

Good question. I'm sure there are a lot of educators that wonder the same thing!

So, I went through the National Regulations and it basically says that if a educator is absent for 5 minutes or less then you are still meeting ratio requirements with 1 educator as long as there is an educator on the premises, not directly working with children, available to help you immediately if required the same goes if one educator is taking a ten minute rest pause, the same conditions as above apply.

I took a snapshot of this part of the regulation so you can have a read of it as well. PDFs don't let me save one page at a time and hopefully you can read what I'm talking about. For your reference in the National Regulations it's on page 286 and 289.

[attachment=0]Ratios_Rest_Pause.png[/attachment]
[attachment=1]Ratio_Minutes_Pause.png[/attachment]
Hope this helps,

,
L.A

[missouri]

Thanks for your reply and looking that up for me, it makes sense and I am happy to work with that, I will print out the regulation as well, as there was a few of us discussing that rule, thanks again.