Office Team Reflections 

GEKA Office Reflections

Tania Peroni, Facilities and Compliance Manager

 

With Term 1 over, we hope that all our GEKA children & families have had a great start to the year.  While COVID continues to be a nuisance, as experienced early February with a snap 5 day lockdown announced by the Victorian premier, we are extremely grateful that the community transmission cases remain at ZERO (at the time of print). 

 

Perhaps the most important action early childhood services can take to reduce the risk of transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) is to ensure that any unwell staff and children remain at home. While the risk of transmission of the virus is very low, it is important that any staff member or child who becomes unwell while at kindergarten, returns home. 

 

While the active cases of COVID-19 in Victoria (and Australia) have dropped significantly, we continue to advise caution, particularly in relation to adults and more vulnerable members of our learning community.

All staff and children will continue to undertake regular hand hygiene, particularly on arrival to the service, before and after eating, after blowing their nose, coughing, sneezing or using the toilet. You are a good role model for the children as their parents/carers, so actively talk about why everyone needs to wash their hands and the importance of everyone doing this.

 

All GEKA kindergartens are thoroughly cleaned and high touch areas, along with the kindergarten space are disinfected and sanitised at the end of each day, in order to maintain optimum hygiene at kindergarten, as GEKA continue to monitor COVID 19 protocols closely.  

 

With a new year, comes new hope and we do hope that 2021 allows for greater family participation amongst the kindergarten cohorts, where our parent volunteer groups are again able to coordinate their activities and working bees.  It is through these social activities and family participation bring the kindergarten community together and new friendships are formed amongst children and adults - something we have all certainly missed in the last 12 months! 

GEKA are hopeful that as the State of Victoria continues to slowly gain more freedoms that we too, can gradually introduce those freedoms back into our kindergarten communities – So please, watch this space!

Emergency First Aid Response in an Education and Care Setting 

Dana Bitan, Services Support Coordinator

 

Providing an Emergency First Aid Response in an Education and Care Setting is an incredibly comprehensive training course. Within this course, you are trained to provide Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Basic Emergency Life Support and First Aid. 

 

At GEKA, we are always keeping up to date with all current First Aid Responses and CPR training courses. It is not only vital within our sector but it is also highly recommended within our day to day lives. 

 

We are unaware of what future situations we may stumble across. Having the knowledge and training to apply, CPR and First Aid can be a matter of life and death. Being in a predicament where it means you can save a life can make a huge impact. 

 

All of our GEKA staff and educators are currently undertaking a 2 day CPR and First Aid Response training course. I have now successfully completed the 2 day course and found it to be extremely insightful. 

 

On the first day of training, we were taught how to perform CPR on adults and infants, as well as performing CPR whilst using an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). Practicing CPR on a dummy is by all means a complete different experience in comparison to a real life situation. One cannot fathom what it would be like to provide CPR to a human. Not only would this experience be confronting and traumatizing but It could also mean saving a life. 

 

On the second day of training, we were taught First Aid Responses and Basic Emergency life support. Some of the life threatening components covered were, Anaphylaxis, Asthma, Allergic Reactions, Burns, Cuts, Bites, Bleeding control, Poisoning, Fractures/Broken Bones, Seizures, Choking, Pressure Immobilisation and more.      

 

I can now confidently say that if I was to find myself in a situation where CPR or First Aid is required. I will apply all of my training and knowledge within that current moment as opposed to being a bystander observing a situation and feeling utterly helpless.