QA2: Sleep Checks

NQS Best Practices: Childcare 2020

Monitoring sleep for your infants is a critical component of care. Ensuring a safe sleep environment with adequate supervision and regular sleep checks are standard requirements. But how do we go beyond just meeting the requirements and instead exceeding them?

“Services exceeding the NQS charge an average of 7% higher fees.” It pays to implement best practices in your service.

National survey for The Early Years Insights – Sept 2019

Here are three practices to consider implementing around sleep:

1. Time Stamped Audit Trail

Using a cloud-based app which time and date stamps sleep checks, and also tracks the educator that’s logging the information is the best way to prove the quality of supervision your team provides. 

Having an app timestamp the activity ensures that ACECQA can easily tell that the guidelines are being met (as opposed to writing down the time that a sleep check was performed in the past). Assuming your supervision is excellent, this ensures you get the recognition for it.

2. SIDS Sleep Check Timer

To obtain the exceeding rating from ACECQA, you need to go beyond meeting the requirements. To do this, use a sleep check app that has a timer for ten-minute increments (to meet the SIDS guidelines). It’s not necessarily about the fact that you might forget to check on a child, rather than you are taking extra steps to ensure a sleep check for an infant is never ever missed

3. Instant Parent Engagement

How do you share sleep schedules and updates with parents? Using an app that instantly shares updates with parents (sleeping, sleep checks and wake up time) will give parents the option of receiving updates about their child’s sleep patterns without forcing them to physically come into the centre to check a chart. 

Some parents come into the centre every day and therefore a physical chart on a wall works well for them. But what about the parents that don’t come in regularly? They have the right to these updates too. Remember, it’s about going beyond meeting the requirements.

An app with these three features will only amplify your business practices. If you run an excellent sleep routine that parents love and ACECQA rates highly, then an app like Xplor makes it easy to document. If ACECQA says you need to work on your sleep practices, talk to Xplor today about industry best practices for your centre.


TO LEARN MORE about implementing best practices as well as automating the recording of data needed to give you the best chance of Exceeding QA2, reach out to Xplor.