As life returns to normal, parents are more comfortable letting their children return to daycare. To date, though, a vaccine that is safe for children hasn’t been developed, so the cleaning and disinfecting of daycare centers and facilities is very important and should be scrutinized! COVID-19 or not, daycare facilities should be kept clean and disinfected to a degree that ensures that every child’s risk of exposure to harmful pathogens is minimal.
Whether your daycare facility has already reopened or plans to in the near future, it’s a good idea to review your cleaning policies and potentially redo your cleaning and disinfecting schedule. It’s not an easy process, but that’s not an excuse to ignore it! Here are some daycare cleaning tips for keeping kids healthy as more children return:
Contract Professional Services
When it comes to protecting the health and safety of children, a penny shouldn’t be spared. If you’re not comfortable with you and your staff’s ability to sufficiently clean and disinfect your daycare facility routinely, then invest in the professional services of a janitorial contractor. Most companies have expanded their services from traditional janitorial to a more comprehensive kind that includes disinfecting, which is now a critical service.
Use Kid-Friendly Products
The truth is that a lot of cleaning and disinfecting products and solutions are harmful to both people and the environment. While we should always keep in mind the effect that the products we use have on the environment, in this case, let’s pay extra attention to the effect that the cleaning and disinfecting products we use in daycare facilities have on children.
The pandemic caused a surge in the development of new cleaning and disinfecting solutions. New products contain various new chemicals, some with unknown effects and others that are known to be potentially harmful. When shopping for cleaning products, or hiring professional services that use cleaning products, make sure to review the ingredients and avoid products that are harmful to children!
Establish (or Revise) Your Own Schedule
Even if you have decided to hire a professional cleaning and disinfecting services provider, you should still have your own cleaning schedule. If you already do, it’s a good time to review and revise it. Beef it up! There’s no shortage of checklists and cleaning templates on the internet, available to you (like this one) to help in the process.
Set Proactive Policies & Call Them “Healthy Habits”
It’s not always easy to get children to do what they should or what you ask of them. That shouldn’t matter when it comes to keeping their daycare environment clean and healthy. Think about implementing new policies that proactively contribute to healthier standards. For example, having the children wash their hands after, say, every activity, or after returning from time outside, is a great way to reduce the risk of transferring pathogens from outside or from the high traffic items within.
