Staying Healthy in Child Care - National Health and Medical ...

Food safety
Getting ready for meals and snacks
• Before meals, clean tables that are to be used for the meal.
• Wash your hands before preparing or serving food. If you are interrupted to care
for another child while preparing food or spoon-feeding an infant, be sure to wash
your hands again before you continue.
• Check that all the children’s hands are washed before they eat or drink.
• Teach children to turn away from food when they cough or sneeze, and then to
wash their hands.
• Make sure children do not share food, plates or utensils. Do not allow children to
choose their food from a common bowl because they may touch food that other
children will eat. Remind them that sharing during meals can spread germs that
might make them or other children sick.
• Use a separate spoon for each baby you feed.
Preparing food
Food is an excellent place for bacteria to grow. Germs that do not grow in food can still
be passed from one person to another in food. Bacteria that are common on our skin and
in the environment can cause food poisoning if allowed to grow to large numbers in food.
Child care centres where staff members change nappies and prepare or serve food on a
daily basis have over three times as much diarrhoea as centres where staff do not do both
these jobs. For this reason, the person who prepares and serves food should not be the
person who changes nappies or helps children go to the toilet on that day.
The child care centre should have a hand basin, soap and disposable towels in the kitchen
so that staff who are preparing food can easily wash their hands. Staff should wear clean
overalls when working in the kitchen. The kitchen should be fly and vermin proof.
If you are involved in handling, preparing or serving food, remember these basic points.
• Wash your hands before handling food.
• To prevent cross-contamination between raw and cooked foods:
− keep raw and cooked foods separate (even in the fridge),
− do not keep uncooked food above cooked food in the fridge, and
− use separate utensils (including cutting boards, knives, etc) for raw and
cooked food.
• Keep food hot (over 60° Celsius) or keep food cold (5° Celsius or less 21 );
otherwise don’t keep it at all. While the legal requirement for reheating food is
60°Celsius, it is recommended that food should be reheated to 70°C for 2 minutes.
Heating to this temperature will destroy germs that may have grown in the food
after it was cooked. The reheating to 70°Celsius is recommended as the centre
does not know if the food has been cooked, stored and transported to the centre
correctly. 22 Ensure the food is allowed to cool before it is given to the child to eat.
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Draft for Public Consultation