Health and Safety Subcommittee Meeting
COALITION FOR SAFETY AND HEALTH IN EARLY LEARNING
Minutesfor September 18, 2015 Recorder: Michaela Horn _
Present: Amy Blanchard,Tori Bradford, Adrienne Dorf, Gail Gensler, Naomi George, Danette Glassy, Jennifer Helseth,Suzanne Kohaya, Trang Kuss, Cathe Paul, Mary Kay Quinlan, Alba Suarez, Sharon Schoenfeld-Cohen, Gloria Smith,Karen Weidert, Nancy Wessenberg, Joan Zerzahn.
:TOPIC /DISCUSSION
/ ACTION/DECISIONWelcome and Introductions / Introductions
Review agenda and minutes
CSHEL Business
Update by Cathe Paul / Copies of the minutes will no longer be distributed at the meetings. They are posted on the website, so please review them before coming to each meeting and bring any changes/comments with you.
Leadership Team Meeting Update: Peggy King has resigned as the CSHEL chair. We have had trouble in the past getting someone to step up to be the chair person. Instead, we will have a rotating meeting facilitator. We need two volunteers to run the next two CSHEL meetings. Current Leadership Team consists of:
Cathe Paul - Website and Continuing Education Activities
Heidi Collins – communications and primary contact person –
if anyone outside of CSHEL wants to connect with CSHEL they need to connect with Heidi
Suzanne Kohaya – technology
Jen Helseth – HeadStart ECEAP
Danette Glassy – Connection with Best Start Washington – Financial agent for CSHEL
Micha Horn – Secretary – takes minutes
If someone has a passion to step up to the plate to take over one of those positions, we can switch.
Update of ByLaws – was last updated in 2010, Cathe and Micha met to start the update, a survey monkey will be sent out in November for comments on the ByLaws and then they will be updated. / Please look for minutes on the website and review them prior to the next meeting.
Need someone to facilitate the January and May CSHEL meetings. Contact Cathe Paul at to volunteer.
Member/Agency Updates / King County Local Hazardous Waste Program (Gail Gensler/Sharon Schoenfeld-Cohen)– program is reinventing itself. Sharon will not be doing child care work next year. Will be working on lead and home remodeling. Gail’s role and scope of work is still to be determined.
Snohomish Health District (Micha Horn) – The distance learning course on immunization tracking for child care providers the Snohomish has offered to local child care providers is being looked at by a few other health departments and organizations for use statewide as a tool and as a STARS training.
UW Center for Public Health and Nutrition (Tori Bradford)– Has been working on training modules (STARS) for child cares on physical activity (based on National Let’s Move campaign). A new one will be posted at the end of the year on breastfeeding support for child care providers. Links to these trainings are also posted on the CSHEL website. Roughly a couple hundred people take them each month.
Benton Franklin (Karen Weidert)– information – add from online report
DEL – Healthiest Next Generation (Adrienne Dorf) – Funding is secure through June 2016. Active Play conference – DOH received support from CDC to bring in a national speaker to spend two days (Sept 29) – First day will bring together leaders to have discussion about how to increase physical activity; (Sept 30) will be a train-the-trainer for those who consult with child care providers about how to promote this with child care providers. Both will be in Federal Way.
Jennifer Helseth – health services specialist with Sound to Harbor Head Start/ECEAP. Trudy Inslee, Betty Hyde, John Weisman all came out and toured a preschool classroom as part of the Healthiest Next Generation – great opportunity. School starts next week. Made lots of program changes.
Department of Early Learning Update
Update from Mary Kay Quinlan / Director: Betty Hyde has retired. New director is Ross Hunter. He is passionate about making a difference for young children.
Background Checks: Mary Kay was able to put in place a centralized background check unit. Four background check specialists are in each of the regions and 2 are in the main office. Will be up and running by October. Hope is that this creates consistency and efficiency and frees up licensors to work in the field as they should.
Safe Sleep Initiative:Has been put in place. 1) Education/training, including DEL licensors and the child care providers, includes 30 hours training has safe sleep information, and a video produced by licensing analyst for providers and parents available on DEL website and on the professional development library. Hopeful that people who are approved STARS trainers will develop additional meaningful trainings. Need to take annual requirement 1 hour training 2) Printed Materials including a trifold brochure “Safe Sleep for Babies” and Safe Sleep Cards, available on website; If providers are in non-compliance, they will need to notify parents that they are out of compliance and must provide materials on safe sleep to parents. 3) WAC Changes – after public comment and negotiated rule making, new WACs will be effective September 19. 4) Developed a policy and procedure around safe sleep. The more we talked with providers, the more they understood and accept it. Part of change in procedure, at first noncompliance incident, will provide technical assistance and must notify parents; at 2nd incident, a citation will be written and will look at probationary license, suspension, civil penalty, modification of license, or other step. If they cannot follow safe sleep practices, may modify license to not allow care of infants.
Questions:
- How will people know? How will they get the information? DEL communications department has sent an email blast and will continue to send out more information in the future. Licensors will take information out as they do their visits. Educating parents is important. Maybe public safety announcements. Family homes will get information from their licensors.
- Are hospitals better about giving new families correct information?Couple years ago, DOH and private group did an information blitz to medical staff/hospitals got handouts and information.
- Is there a stipulation on how the annual training occurs? Must be a STARS-approved training. Hoping that private STARS trainers will develop information. Training DEL did and posted on-line is available for STARS credit and is also available in Spanish. AAP has a good training on their site on Safe Sleep is no cost, but would need to connect with a STARS trainer to verify that they did it.
- Healthy Child Care.org – AAP website has lots of great printed material. If you request, AAP may send you printed copies.
- DEL blog on homepage
- Rules development:
- New safe sleep regulation:
Department of Health
Update by Joan Zerzan / Staffing Updates: DOH has new staff members, will have 4 positions available and will have Child Health Consultant positions open.
Great LINCS Grant: Grant designed to develop a shared resource for children with special health care needs.
Project LAUNCH:Originally a 5 year grant, one of first states that had it. Community in Yakima was first, and now is expanding additional 4 years to other communities serving military families. Will provide screening opportunities (fact sheet provided during meeting)
Breastfeeding Friendly Washington: working with hospitals to be breastfeeding friendly. Will branch out now with DEL into early learning centers. Also working with UW on learning module.
Nutrition Training Contract:provide training for nutritionist working with high risk and CSHCN from hospital to home. Sent 2 feeding teams to intensive 5 day training on physical, emotional, and relational aspects of feeding. Want to build skill and hope to work with early learning facilities to help transitions.
Questions:
- How can the state DOH publish a lot of materials in a readable format for printing? There are great brochures, but when you try to download them, it is really hard to read. Materials are on HERE page. Many nurses are private nurses and beautiful color handouts are expensive to print. DOH now has a cross-agency child health workgroup. Joan will bring issue back to this workgroup.
- Request for information specific for families from India. Joan will bring this request to the workgroup as well.
DOH Immunizations
Update by Trang Kuss / Reporting:Starting to work on Reporting Requirement due November 1st. Will not make available an online report form. All child care providers will need to send a hard copy. They can scan and email or send by US mail. The online reporting form did not work well.
- How will the centers know they need to do this? DOH sent out an email to DEL Communications, LHJs, Child Care Aware, and CSHEL. Heidi sent out email to CSHEL members.
- Where is form found? Link sent to CSHEL members included a link to the form.
- Is there a way to look at records directly and not have to go through child cares? They are starting to look at this. Hoping that in the future, medical providers will validate all immunizations so it isn’t relying on parents to report the information.
Records access: Trying to help parents to access immunization records and CIS forms more easily. Have resources available to get them a copy from the IIS; parents have to send an email to request their record. Email to do that: .
- How do you ensure confidentiality? Release form must be filled out before immunization record is mailed. Looking to have parents able to log in with a password to access their child’s immunization record through a portal. (MyIR system)
DOH Healthiest Next Generation
Update by Adrienne Dorf / DEL Alignment: Trying to align licensing regulations with ECEAP performance standards and early achievers. Also trying to align family home and center WACs. Center WACs are older. Big effort working towards this. There were problems with people having to meet standards that didn’t align with one another. Currently looking at where there is alignment already, and where there are gaps. There will be community meetings starting in the fall at early learning regional council coalitions. Need to make sure health people are at these meetings. / Adrienne will send out dates for regional meetings.
Environmental Health Presentation
Update by Gail Gensler / Toys, Crafts Chemicals, and More: What’s Safer for Kids
Services that Gail’s program has: 1) trainings 2) site visits 3) vouchers. Services are at no cost; program is only available in King County. Have trained about 500 people in person over the past 5 years.
One of the highest exposure risk groups is prenatal to age 8.
Bleach: Working on reducing exposures to bleach to children in child care by 1) making sure people use the right levels and don’t overuse and 2) finding alternatives to bleach.
What do these items have in common? Paint chipping off a window sill, water from tap, toy dinosaur, painted ceramic pot…. LEAD. Different opinions on the seriousness of exposure to lead in our state. Many other states have more stringent regulations. About 6000 children attending child care in a building built before 1978. Doesn’t mean that there is lead exposure, but there is an exposure hazard. Flushing the water in the morning is good. Use cold water for drinking/food prep. Lead exposure from toys comes from oral exposure. Can test with XRF guns. California maintains a list of foods high in lead, often candy.
Shoe-free Child Cares: Very important thing that child cares can do to help protect children from contaminants. Walk-off mats are a good idea as well.
Open Windows: Helps to reduce indoor air contaminants.
Vacuums:Recommend a HEPA filter (99.9% of contaminants caught). Many vacuums that you buy now have HEPA filters. You have to change the HEPA filter and bag.
Packets handed outIn packet – right side are handouts and on left is Eco-Healthy CC Info)
Eco-Healthy Child Care Program: A national program. This document is good as a guide for evaluating a child care facility. This is an endorsement program which child cares can apply for. There are 5 or 6 child cares in King County who have achieved this. Published in EcoLogica magazine.
EWG website: Environmental working group website. Read criteria on what they are ranking and decide if you agree.
Dollar Stores: Are their products at higher risk for contaminants? A report is available called “A Day Late and a Dollar Short – Feb 2015” – information about Dollar Stores. 81% of products found in dollar stores have toxics.
Toy: Plastic items. There are three symbols indicating safety oversight (CE – European Union safety oversight, their standards are tougher than our US standards), Triangle Lion (UK), and Thailand
Used items:look for items in good condition, remove old stuff, chipped stuff.
Household Chemicals and Cleaners:Look for signal words on the product that indicate safety level. Avoid those products that have “Danger” or “Poison” written on them. If products have “Caution” or “Warning” it is a better choice. Safest has no signal word.
Protect Kids from Toxics:brochure available in many languages; / Gail’s job is changing. If there are services that you do not want to see go away, write to . Where could this information go and be most useful.
Next Meeting / Requested for the next meeting…A facilitator for January meeting and May meeting. A job description is available for those stepping up to do the job.
Next scheduled CSHEL meeting will be January 15, 2016, at PSESD, Renton.
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