It is a requirement of the Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements that at least one practitioner trained in first aid is on the premises at all times. Currently first aid training has to have local authority approval, but this does not mean that providers are restricted to the training approved by their own local authority.
A spokeswoman for one training company said, ‘We understand that many authorities are advising that in order to meet the requirements of the EYFS, childcare providers must access training offered by the authority in which they are based. For many this has removed all choice which we believe is unfair and restrictive.’
The DfE has now clarified this issue stating – ‘Individual local authorities have to decide how they approve paediatric first training providers, and how many they have within their areas. The training given must, of course, meet the needs of childcare practitioners and the children they care for.
‘However, if a particular training course provider has already been approved by another English LA, then that would be sufficient because the EYFS does not require that approval has to be from a specific LA.’
Under changes proposed by More Great Childcare the requirement for paediatric first aid to have LA approval may disappear altogether.
In the Government’s consultation on Regulating Childcare, it proposes to remove - ‘constraints on childcare training, for example, the obligation to use only LA approved first aid training’. It proposes replacing this with an ‘outline of specified course content’.