Early Childhood Centres Preliminary Analysis of Options

Yes

1.The evacuation of children/adults with disabilities should also be considered as these individuals may not be easily evacuated down flights of stairs.

2. When evacuating large volumes of children from multistory buildings (ie: can be over 100 children ) the assembly point or at least egress of children usually is into or through another potentially high risk/hazardous area - the car park.

3. Height of door handles for fire exit doors give children access to fire exit stairwells during regular operational hours of the ECC. Stairwells are unsupervised/hazardous spaces, which will often lead out to hazardous environments such as roads or carparks.

4. Fire fighting equipment can be hazardous to children. Often located within playing spaces, they can host several hazards for children:
a. If located near balustrades, they can provide unintended access over the balustrades.
b. Housings, mountings and moving parts can be sharp and potentially cause pinch, crush and shearing injuries. Proposed solution: cover hose reels, extinguishers and other equipment with fabric jackets (with fast release fasteners such as Velcro) to remove hazards from reach of children’s hands.

5. Flooring materials in child care centres 'outdoor play areas' are generally synthetic grass or rubber. These materials are potentially flammable.

Proposed solutions for :
2: Provide a catchment area at the base of stairwell with child safety latch which children can not go beyond without an adult.
3:
- Magnetic locking of fire safety doors with opening triggered by alarm.
- Alarm to sound if evacuation door is opened to alert staff of a child accessing this area.
- Install door handle hard wear out of reach if children for exits out of the building.
- Provide a catchment area at the base of stairwell with child safety latch which children can not go beyond without an adult

4
a: Exclude mounting points within 1 metre of a balustrade.
b. Cover hose reels, extinguishers and other equipment with fabric jackets (with fast release fasteners such as Velcro) to remove hazards from reach of children’s hands.

5. Rather than requiring non flammable materials be used in egress pathways such as concrete etc require exit pathways be made of materials which have had a fire retardant applied, this will allow maximum flexibility for the provision of active play for children attending the ECC rather than being divided by solid surface pathways.

Is it possible to limit the maximum number of stories a child care centre can be located on, ie maximum 3? This would provide some flexibility with commercial rental rates etc and still reduce the risk for evacuation ie; more manageable in the case of a critical incident evacuation.

We regularly inspect child care centre playgrounds. There has been an increase in the number of multi storey ECC's. The issues we have raised are anecdotal and are hazards within themselves.

Combination of 2 and 3.

Ideally 3, however a precedence has been set with existing centres being located in multi storey buildings.

There are other issues regarding heights of balustrades which we will be raising separately with the ABCB.