A child’s neck became wedged in a fence and their breathing was restricted after they fell off a bike while attending early childhood education.
The injury was one of 244 serious incidents that ECE services notified to national health and safety regulator.
More than half of the injuries involved trips, slips or falls, the Office of Early Childhood Education’s analysis of the data, which we obtained under the Official Information Act, found.
What is a notifiable injury or illness? From the WorkSafe Website: All injuries or illnesses that require (or would usually require) a person to be admitted to hospital for immediate treatment are notifiable. A notifiable incident is an unplanned or uncontrolled work-related incident that exposes the health and safety of workers or others to a serious risk arising from immediate or imminent exposure to such dangers as a gas leak or explosion. A notifiable event is any of the following work-related events: a death, a notifiable injury or illness or a notifiable incident.
Incidents included:
– A child being given food they were allergic to.
– A child eating laundry powder after following a staff member into the laundry room.
– A child sliding down a piece of play equipment with a plastic tube in their mouth, leading to the tube hitting the back of their throat “with force” as they hit the ground.
