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High-quality environments keep children safe from injury. This lesson focuses on ways your work with the staff ensures that indoor and outdoor environments are safe for children.

Safety is a major priority in child development and school-age programs. Unsafe toys and materials can put children at risk for injury or illness. You can help staff members choose, use, and check toys with safety in mind. This lesson focuses on inspecting toys and materials for safety and providing guidance to staff about toys and materials.

Although it is critical to provide safe materials and a safe environment, supervision is the most powerful tool we have to keep children safe. This lesson focuses on ways to support staff members as they provide appropriate supervision indoors and outdoors. It also addresses ways to ensure accountability for children’s safety and ways to provide feedback on appropriate child supervision.

Safety is the primary responsibility of direct-care staff. It is important to ensure that staff members are trained and demonstrate competence with safe sleep practices for infants and young children. This lesson will provide guidance on training staff to follow American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.

Emergencies can happen at any time. Being prepared for emergencies can help you keep children and staff safe during stressful situations. This lesson will focus on helping you plan, organize, and practice evacuation and emergency procedures in advance. This includes contingency procedures such as for tornadoes, terrorist threats, epidemics, and other emergencies.

Despite your best efforts to keep children safe, injuries can happen. You must be prepared to respond quickly when a child or staff member gets hurt. This lesson will help you recognize different events that can cause injuries in child development and school-age programs, and you will learn how to keep children safe by getting them medical attention.
 

Child abuse and neglect put children at risk for injury and even death. As a coach, it is your responsibility to ensure staff members (a) know the signs of abuse and neglect, (b) prevent child abuse through parent education, and (c) report suspected cases of child abuse.