Many organizations provide licensed child care services, from before- and after-school programs to day care and day camps. Government licensing sets minimum requirements around child care services and ensures that programs are monitored for compliance with these requirements. Child care licensing requirements vary from region-to-region, and often include topics like child-staff ratio, group size, and immunization information.

For recreation agencies providing licensed child care services, staff collect participant health and emergency contact information on paper forms, as well as additional documentation that requires a wet signature – this costs staff time and money, and is a headache for families too. Here’s how ePACT helps your recreation organization collect critical information to support participant safety, while helping you meet your child care licensing requirements.

How Do We Collect Required Licensing Information Easily?

ePACT helps you collect critical health information from families, and ensure it remains accurate and up-to-date – all using a single record and eliminating the need for separate paper forms, or families having to provide the same information multiple times. ePACT helps you collect:

• Basic Medical Information: Date of birth, important medical conditions (can be flagged for quick viewing on a record), and health care providers.
• Medications and Treatments: Medical conditions like heart conditions, asthma, seizures or epilepsy, and immunization details.
• Allergies and Dietary Information: Food, environmental, and medication allergies, including severity and treatment, and dietary needs, such as restrictions (vegan, lactose intolerant), faith-based food requirements, and health reasons (diabetic, celiac).
• Shared Files: Upload documents that require a wet signature, including immunization records, allergy plans, medication instructions, and staff documents, like criminal background checks or CPR and First Aid certifications.
• Waivers & Consents: Manage, add, and update required waivers and consents to member records for families to review and accept with a single click. ePACT’s eSignature feature provides a date-stamped electronic signature and IP address, and authorized staff can track which families have accepted/declined, as well as who has signed and when, which helps with licensing audits and answering legal questions.

How Do We Request Emergency Contact Information From Families?

Emergency contacts are key for child care programs, and ePACT helps families assign emergency, and out-of-area contacts, as well as authorized pickups, for each child registered within your programs. They can also provide complete contact and address information for each individual.

ePACT is specifically designed to help you quickly and effectively handle communication in an emergency. As soon as an emergency, or out-of-area, contact is connected to a family within your organization, you can use ePACT’s Communication Tools to send voice, text, and email messages directly from the system so that they receive information in a timely manner, and can provide additional support to a child when required.

How Do We Make Sure Only Authorized Staff See Participant Information?

In order to support participants day-to-day or in an emergency, ePACT provides authorized staff with quick, easy, and secure access to information when they need it the most. ePACT allows administrative staff to control access to participant records, and ensures that staff can only see the information for children they are responsible for, even when they use the App.

Whether it’s preparing for a program, or responding to an emergency, ePACT’s Admin App ensures that staff can:

• View participant records at their fingertips, online or offline, instead of having to ask administrative staff to find information stored in a back office.
• Quickly see flagged, or critical, medical conditions, and avoid spending hours copying and sorting forms into binders or file folders for offsite use.
• Receive participant updates in real time, even after a program or camp has started, and never worry about having inaccurate participant information.
• Communicate with staff, families, and emergency contacts via email, text, or voice messaging, and eliminate the hassle of ineffective phone trees.

How Do We Manage Pick Up Lists and Support Reunification?

Ensuring the safety of the participants within your child care programs starts the moment they’re dropped off at your recreation or community center, and pickup lists ensure that staff only release a child to an authorized parent or guardian.

ePACT allows staff to create and manage pickup lists and reports, which are accessible to staff on- or off-site, and can be archived for retention requirements or auditing purposes. Pickup lists are used to track participant check ins and check outs, collect parent/guardian signatures, and to speed up reunification, whether there’s an emergency or a child is simply being picked up at the end of the day. They also make it easy to see which individuals are not authorized to pick up a child.

How Does ePACT Help Us Meet HIPAA Legislation Requirements?

ePACT is a HIPAA-compliant solution (US), and meets legislative requirements around FIPAA (BC) and PIPEDA (Canada) that provides you with the tools your organization needs to collect, manage, and store sensitive health information in an online system, rather than on unsecured paper forms that can be viewed by anyone, or are easy to lose or misplace.

• Limit Access and Authorization: Administrators control access to information in ePACT, allowing program staff to only view records for those participants they are responsible for, and easily revoking access once a program ends or if a staff member leaves your organization.
• Secure Connections and Encryption Services: ePACT meets, and often exceeds, the same security standards as online banks. Families use unique user IDs and passwords to access their accounts, and administrators use their own to access their database, and SSL connection protects information as it’s shared over the internet.
• Meeting Legislative Requirements: ePACT data is stored, hosted, and backed up in secure facilities in Canada to ensure that accounts are always available and information isn’t lost in a disaster. It’s possible to track account activity, including changes made, to ensure that information is not being misused. ePACT is also set up to automatically log a user out and ensure that no one can access an account without authorization.

Can We Archive Information Long-Term?

Organizations providing childcare services are regularly audited to ensure compliance with licensing regulations. ePACT’s Archiving feature is designed to help your organization manage health and emergency information easily, for as long as you need to. Archiving works in conjunction with your existing ePACT account, allowing you to archive forms, waivers, consents and more, and store them digitally in ePACT’s cloud-based system, no matter the length of time required.

Once added to your account, the Archiving feature starts working to save records right away, and staff can easily filter and search for specific participant records to find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily. You can view results in a single dashboard, and download applicable documents that belong to a member archive for audits, reporting, and any other requirements. ePACT will automatically delete records once their retention period reaches its expiry date, so you don’t need to worry about physically storing paper forms or remember to dispose of the records you’re no longer required to keep!

If you’d like to see how ePACT can support your organization’s licensed programs, request a free demo today!

 

Sources:

• Child Care.gov: Child Care Licensing & Regulations (US)
• British Columbia Laws: Child Care Licensing Regulations (Canada)
• Ontario Ministry of Education: Child Care Licensing Resources (Canada)
• Department of Health & Human Services: HIPAA (US)

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