Health, safety and nutrition are three of the most important factors to consider when raising a child. In other words, every child should be raised with proper nutrition, good health and safety as possible, allowing him or her to grow with a great well-being.
Now, if you are one of the adults who have been wondering where on earth to get good advices for child health, safety and nutrition, I bet you would be happy to know that you’ve found the right place. Yes, this page will help you find the right places to go for child health, safety and nutrition advices. It is important to note, however, that these portals are just a few of the many online. But they are worth considering to get started.
So to find the best advices for child health, safety and nutrition, read on.
Health and Safety
Several researches have noted that in today’s fast-paced world where the child’s safety and health issues are rapidly growing, more than fifty sites online present health and safety guidelines for the public to consider. These guidelines are disseminated throughout the net, allowing the people to access this wealth of information as easy as possible.
A few of the worth visiting portals online that talk about child health and safety issues and advices are the following:
BrightFutures.org
Bright Futures is sponsored by a well-known health care organization, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration. This is also supported in part by the Pfizer Pediatric Health, and has been operating to provide the public the necessary information about the current and emerging preventive and health promotion needs of infants, children, adolescent, families and communities.
NCCIC.org
NCCIC.org is actually the official website of Health Child Care America, which is but a federal government initiative that works to increase collaboration between the early childhood community as well as the public health community. This collaboration is considered to allow these communities to create the best care for children in the childcare. Today, this federal government initiative is introducing its newsletter which is made available in full text online.
Nutrition
NAL.USDA.gov
This portal is owned by the Child Care Nutrition Resource System, which has long been providing the public with the wide selection of recipes, resources and information on how to prepare meals that are highly nutritious and safe.
BCM.TMC.edu
At this site, you can access the Children’s Nutrition Research Center, which is but the first federally funded nutrition research center in the United States. This center is dedicated to investigating the nutritional needs of those women who are expecting and are nursing their children. This is great for child nutrition as it covers information about children from conception through adolescence.
So those are just a few of the many sites online that tackle issues on child health, safety and nutrition. Visit other online sites for more information about child health, safety and nutrition.
Planning For Hazard Control
Risk assessment (RA) processes should ideally start at the planning stage of the work activity, continuing throughout the work activity itself and should be concluded in periodic reviews, to ensure that the risk assessment is always current task specific and complete.
An initial assessment must be made to ascertain whether or not each hazard presents a significant risk of injury or damage in the activity. The level of risk arising from each hazard must then be quantified using the risk matrix considering current company procedures and existing permits / work controls.
When all the initial significant hazards have been identified, a supervisor should look to minimise the risk to as low as reasonably practicable by listing specific precautions and ensuring there is full compliance by the workforce and the other effected people towards the controls. The precautions should address each of the hazards in turn and before moving to the next identified hazard, the supervisor must ensure the risk of injury is as low as reasonably practicable.
Following the introduction of the preventative measures the hazards need to be re-addressed to ensure that the residual risk of each hazard has achieved a low risk rating. Any hazards that present a risk rating higher than “low” following the introduction of the preventative measures should not continue. The work activity should be revisited in an attempt to find an alternative method for completion or additional preventative measures in order for the work to be carried out without risk of injury or damage. Residual risk identification should be carried out in the same way as the initial assessment in that each hazard is considered in turn and the risk of the injury / damage being quantified.
Risk Assessment Content
The description of all the steps involved within the work activity should contain sufficient detail so that the people carrying out the RA can identify all relevant hazards and identify cost efficient reasonably practicable means in which to control them. Persons at risk from the work activity not only means the people carrying out the activity, but also everyone else who may be effected in any way by the work activity, for example anyone passing the activity, anyone working above or below the activity or the general public.
The description of the location in which the work activity will be carried out should contain sufficient details of the exact location, including plant / equipment numbers and should ideally identify other work activities that will be carried out in close proximity. For large work activities, the main assessment could be divided into smaller individual task based risk assessments and these could be referenced within the main risk assessment, to avoid the main risk assessment information pack becoming too large.
The individual assessments should cover the specific hazards present in the work activities and are often created for specialist work activities that only sufficiently trained people can carry out, for example welding. These assessments are smaller and are produced for easy reference for the operatives involved.
Any Permit to Work requirements should also be identified in the risk assessment during the planning stage, in addition to identifying specialist assessments of scaffolding, insulation, pressure testing, COSHH etc. All the documents associated with those assessments should ideally be attached to the risk assessment to form a pack to use at the workplace which allows easy reference for the operatives.
It is important to note that risk assessments are not simply a paperwork generating exercise. To avoid this happening, the supervisors of the work activity should proactively concentrate their focus on controlling significant hazards, which are reasonably foreseeable to cause injury or damage. Any trivial risks often don’t need to be identified on the risk assessments, to keep the awareness of the main risks higher for all of the people using the risk assessments to safely carry out their work.
Data shows that small businesses that have health and safety procedures in place reduce their injury and illness costs by 20 percent and even up to 40 percent. Nearly 95 percent of business owners report that health and safety programs have a positive impact on the company’s bottom-line according to a recent survey. Of this group, 61 percent say their return-on-investment is 3 dollars for every 1 dollar they invest in improving workplace safety. In addition, companies that have working health and safety programs in place have seen employee absenteeism drop in half.
A well planned health and safety program is obtainable even for small businesses. For example in this worst to first situation, a small manufacturing company was forced into putting a health and safety program in place or be shut down. They started by doing an audit, identified and controlled hazards, showed working procedures, and had to keep their injury rates below the national average for their sector. After they had implemented their health and safety program, they had many years with not one injury and saved more than $45,000 on insurance premiums. The company was even recognized with an award for their safety record. The owner, Rick, said “Our health and safety program has helped us protect our employees, maintain compliance, keep our vital employees working for us, and has saved us real money to put back into our company.”
Health and safety is no longer just viewed as a good idea, but a crucial investment in the business’ long term success. Mounting costs of unhealthy employees and the expense and disruption of staff turnover is turning many small business owners to health and safety. The payback in health and safety programs comes in the form of: improved productivity, fewer insurance and worker’s comp claims, less absenteeism, decrease in accidents, reduced staff turnover, higher employee morale, and leads to a better business reputation and customer loyalty.
Unhealthy and absent employees are costly. Businesses incur direct costs such as worker’s comp payments, disability costs, replacement employees, equipment damage, and even lost productivity.
By having a health and safety program in place, employers also protect themselves from liability in employee’s injury in being exposed to unidentified hazards in the workplace. Employers can be charged in injuries caused to untrained employees. An unhealthy may also threaten the safety of others such as fellow employees, the business owner, and even the customer of the business.
In starting a program, there needs to be commitment. Employers must get a feeling of the seriousness of this new procedure. The planning should be a partnership between the business owner and employees. To be able to actively engage all aspects of the on-going process in the business, the program should consider all of the major health risks in all of the areas of the workplace to meet the needs of all employees.
Deciding on whether to have a health and safety program should be clear. Health and safety issues in the workplace cost the business owner directly and even in lost opportunity. A change to making the business safer will lead to a more positive bottom-line.