Maintaining Safe and Healthy Childcare Environment at Home

Running head: CHILDCARE AT HOME
CHILDCARE AT HOME
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Introduction:
In order to provide healthy start to the life from the beginning it is important to
provide safe and healthy home-based childcare environment to the children (Vanderloo,
Martyniuk & Tucke, 2015). The purpose of the report is to understand how to prepare healthy
environment for the children in the home. The paper will focus on preparing healthy
environment for the children through sterilizing equipments, effective food storage process,
effective waste disposal and keeping the children safe from pets.
Maintaining safe and healthy environment for children:
While setting up an indoor child care environment, the health and safety of children
should be the main concerns in order to prevent injuries or safety risks. By maintaining a
healthy and safe environment, risks of harm due to hazards can be minimized or even
prevented to ensure the wellbeing of the children. Health and safety can be maintained
through several; aspects such as:
Preparing formula feeds:
While preparing feed, it is important to identify the correct formula of food to be
given, using feeding cups, using written guidelines for food preparation, having a proper area
to prepare food, provision of refrigerating the food, and also ensuring traceability to labeling
the prepared food.
Formula food for infants and children might be contaminated with different pathogens
that can cause serious illnesses. These risks can be reduced by proper handling and
preparation of the food. For powdered formula, water should be heated to 70 degree celcious
or above and the prepared food should be consumed immediately or stored in the refrigerator.
To prepare cup feeds, the surface on which the food is prepared should be disinfected, hands

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washed properly before preparation, boiling some safe water, checking the instructions to
identify the right amounts of the powder and water needed to prepare the feed, carefully
pouring the right amount of boiling water cooled to 70 degrees C, adding the exact amount of
the formula to water, mixing thoroughly, cooling the mix to room temperature, drying the
outside of the cup, labeling the cup, checking the temperature again before feeding (Brown,
2018).
Sterilizing feeding equipment:
The feeding equipment can be sterilized and cleaned using commercial sterilizer or
boiling water. For commercial sterilizer, the manufacturer’s information can be used. For
using boiling water, a large pan should be filled with water, the feeding equipments should be
placed in the water after cleaning (ensuring the equipments are completely submerged and no
air bubbles are left), covering the pan with a lid and boiling the water (Shinde, Jain & Kale,
2014). This would destroy any pathogen which might be present in the equipment.
Preparing and storing food:
How to store cooked and uncooked food safely
Food is the main way of spreading illness, thus it is important to store food safely to
avoid contamination. The cooked food should be covered with the lid. It is important to store
fruits and vegetables in a proper freezing point that is 00 or lower temperature, as the
temperature prevents the microbes from contaminating them. Dry food should be stored in
the clean container and the lid of the container should be tight so that air could not enter the
container. Cross check of storage is required to be confirm about the safe storage (Parra et al.,
2014).
Hygienic preparation of food