When you work all day, you need to ensure that your child has the best possible care. Daycare and early learning centers want that too. They work hard to meet your child’s needs, but they don’t have legal or medical authorization to administer their daily medication in preschool.
Early learning and daycare centers create unique educational opportunities. They help your children learn with play, music, and academic experiences. They provide a caring environment to help your little child thrive. However, if your son or daughter is sick enough to require medication throughout the day, they realize it falls outside their professional expertise.
All daycare centers have sick child policies
When you register your child in school or daycare, you learn dozens of rules about managing childhood illness. Child care facilities have always followed these guidelines to help keep all of their students safe and well.
- If a child has a fever, the school sends them home.
- Parents must keep a child at home until 24 hours after their fever is gone.
- Every school must have at least one CPR-certified staff member on the premises at all times
- A staff member must have completed a first aid course.
- Schools and daycare facilities establish medication protocols as well.
- Daycare centers must dispense inhalable emergency medication to intervene when a child has an asthma emergency.
- They must inject emergency medication (via EPI Pen) to interfere during a severe allergic reaction.
- Schools must track and document medication storage and use.
- Parents must provide physician authorizations and asthma or EPI emergency medications and replace them periodically.
- If daycare centers handle any child’s daily medication in preschool, they must have the appropriate medical training and certification.
Connecticut Statutes Set the Standards
When a daycare provider tells you they can’t dispense your child’s daily medication in preschool; it’s not just school policy. Daycare and early learning centers must comply with Connecticut General Statutes. These laws specify what a child care center can and cannot do, from licensing to employee qualifications.
CGS, 19a-79-9a, Administration of Medications, establishes guidelines for dispensing medication in a child care environment. It requires that care centers comply with the medical protocols listed above. In providing medicine, anything beyond emergency allergy or asthma treatment requires physician-assisted training, medical certification, and documented dispensing protocols.
Daycare medication administration requires medical training
Medication guidelines exist for a reason. Doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and physicians receive long-term medical training for authority to prescribe and dispense medications. Likewise, daycare providers and educators train to earn the authority to educate and care for young children.
Each profession requires specialized training and certification so they can meet professional expectations. As a parent, you are the only one with the authority to become actively involved in every aspect of your child’s education and medical care.
We want to help keep children healthy and safe
Our daycare providers and educators at TLC receive training and certifications for CPR, emergency EPI injections, emergency inhaler use, and first aid. We are proud to provide emergency care when appropriate. By following state guidelines, we have an opportunity to both educate your children and help keep them healthy and safe.
Contact The Learning Center
To find out more about daycare and educational opportunities in Windsor, South Windsor, and Manchester, complete our contact form. We’ll call you as soon as possible.