Newly Updated: Inspection Essentials Starter Pack Now Includes a Medicine Record and Visitor Books!

Tusla currently carries out two main types of inspection, the focused inspection and the fit for purpose inspection (for newcomers). Both inspections concentrate on three main themes under the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016:

• Governance: staffing and accountability.
• Safety: focuses on the safety and wellbeing of the children attending.
• Premises: ensuring the building is safe and fit for purpose.

The Inspection Essentials Starter Pack has all the key records for these inspections and now includes the new Visitor Log Book and the new Medicine Record Log book. Putting all these measures in place will keep you very much on track and help you be prepared for an inspection.

What is included in the Inspection Essentials Starter Pack?

There are two elements of the Inspections Essentials Starter Pack. The first part is the forms and documentation. All of these forms and documents are sent by email in a downloadable file and, once saved to your laptop or PC, can be edited to suit your own service needs. You can add in your own service details including your name and/or logo and add or remove text so that the forms are specific to your service. The documentation has been categorised into five parts as described below:

1. Risk Assessment Pack - The Risk Assessment Pack is a comprehensive pack that includes a whole range of safety assessment forms relating to your operations. This includes risk assessments for staff such as Garda Vetting, Manual Handling, Pregnancy and Recruitment. It includes Risk Assessment forms for your buildings (such as Fire Safety, Housekeeping, Office, Electricity etc.), and for your Operations (Child Safety Welfare, Infections Control, Accident Reporting and Sleep etc.). It also includes risk assessment forms for outings, risky play and a safety briefing form for any specific event that you may want to organise. 
2. Cleaning Pack - The Cleaning Pack includes daily, weekly and monthly cleaning records for the classroom, kitchen and general cleaning areas so that you have a log to record all cleaning activities, ensuring that you are maintaining infection control within your service. 
3. Medical Pack - The Medical Pack includes Medicine Authorisation and Medicine Administration Records as well as a First Aid Kit Monthly Checklist which requires signing off on a monthly basis. 
4. Personnel Pack - The Personnel Pack includes a general job description, a staff information sheet, an induction record, an individual training record, a job chat sheet and a Personnel File Checklist, which is a handy checklist of everything you require to have on each staff person's file. 
5. Child Pack - The child pack includes the Child Registration Form with Privacy Statement and includes all the permissions and GDPR consents. It also includes a Sleep Monitoring Record for services with sleep rooms.

The second part of the pack includes four different record books that you will require to keep track of children’s attendance, visitors, medicine administration and accidents and incidents as per below: 

1. Newly added Medicine Book – Administration of Medicine Record: Some children may require medication while attending a service due to an illness, and therefore medicine administration is an important responsibility within every childcare service. Staff members must keep a record each time that they administer medication using an ‘Administration of Medication Consent Form’. Each record contains three key sections: Consent, Record of Medicine Given and Outcome Record.
2. Newly added Visitor Book: It is a regulation requirement to have a Visitor Record, under the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016 and the Child Care Act 2018 (Early Years Services) (Registration of School Age Services) Regulations 2018. The Act states that ‘All persons entering an early years setting must be approved by an employee and each person must sign in and sign out of the building. The register must be stored for one year from the date it has begun (Regulation 24 (3 &4)'. The book contains 20 entries per page and has 100 pages per book. The information that must be collected on a visitor record includes Date, Name, Company, Contact Details, Time In, Time Out, Reason for Visit, Authorised by. The Visitor Record Book allows for all of the above.
3. Children’s Roll Book with Sign In and Sign Out: Under the Quality and Regulatory Framework, the requirement is that each child be signed in and out of the service every day. The Children's Roll Book makes it easy to keep comprehensive attendance records. It has a spiral binding so it lies flat. It also provides spaces for the child’s details including authorised collection and emergency contacts.
4. Accident and Incident Book: Truly essential, the Accident and Incident book has triplicate forms for 50 incidents. This means you have 3 copies, one for the family, one for the child’s file and one to stay in the book as an incident record for the room.

The pack costs €125.00 and includes all documentation and log books as mentioned above. Purchase the Inspection Essentials Starter Kit now!