Childrens Pack FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Why has this pack
been developed?
This pack has been developed to help children understand the
importance of hand hygiene. It was produced in collaboration
with:
- Learning and Teaching Scotland
- Health Protection Scotland
- Scottish Government Health Directorate
- Scottish Government Education Directorate
- NHS Health Scotland
Health promotion is an important issue and this includes raising
awareness about hand washing to help reduce the spread of
germs. Our aim is to raise the awareness of hand hygiene as
early as possible to encourage children to get into the habit of
washing their hands regularly. Hand hygiene is extremely effective
in helping to prevent transmission of infection such as colds and
flu. The Children's Pack is full of ideas and materials to
encourage children to make hand washing part of their everyday
routine.
What is the purpose of the Hand Hygiene
Packs?
Children need to understand why it is important to wash their
hands. To do this they need help from their parents, their
carers and their teacher or from a member of staff at their
nursery. The purpose of the pack is to support those roles
and provide practical advice so that children are encouraged to
practice hand washing regularly. Encouraging children from an early
age to wash their hands will help to ensure that this practice
becomes a lifelong habit.
Why is frequent
hand washing so important?
Frequent hand washing is one of the single most important things
we can do to help to reduce the spread of infections and prevent
ill health. For example, good hand hygiene in children will
help to prevent the spread of common communicable infections such
as colds and tummy bugs. Getting this message out to children
will also help to influence their hand washing practices at home as
well as at school.
What is covered in
the pack?
The pack was produced with the help of Learning and Teaching
Scotland. The pack contains:
- Posters featuring a cartoon character called Handy to encourage
regular hand washing
- Reminder stickers of Handy for placing around toilets and
classroom sinks
- Some ideas to help make hand washing part of the school day and
to raise children's awareness
- A fun reward chart that can be filled out when children wash
their hands. (This can be photocopied or downloaded and given out
to pupils each week)
- Stickers of Handy to reward children for washing their hands -
these could be given out at the end of each week
- A cartoon DVD featuring Handy to help explain why, when and how
hands should be washed
Which age group is the pack
designed for?
The pack has been designed specifically for use by children
between the ages of three and six and is supported by materials
available from this website.
Can I download
Handy?
Yes - there is a downloadable image of 'Handy' on this website.
This can be printed out at any size you want and can be used in
lots of different ways. For example, you could use this to make
your own reward chart. Or, you could print out a large 'Handy' and
put him onto cardboard to act as hand-washing monitor.
I have some ideas that I
would like to share with other schools/nurseries, how can I do
that?
We are pleased that you want to share your ideas with others.
You can share your ideas by logging on to the Discussion Forum of
the Learning and Teaching Scotland Early Years website. The
web address is http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/earlyyears.
I've used the materials
contained in the pack, where can I get more?
All the materials contained in the pack are available for
download from this website.
Can I get hard copies
of the pack?
No - a limited number of hard copies of the pack was distributed
to publicly funded schools and nurseries. All the pack
materials are however freely available for download from this
website for everyone to use.
Who has not been sent
copies of the pack?
Distribution of the pack was limited to local authority primary
schools and partner nurseries. Private primary schools and
non-partner nurseries were not included in the distribution but all
the materials are available for them to download from this
website.
Will hard copies of hand
hygiene packs be issued to schools and nurseries in
2010?
No - we have no plans to do so. The materials will,
however, continue to be made available from this website for the
foreseeable future.
What else is
being done to encourage good hand hygiene?
The distribution of hand hygiene packs forms part of the wider
hand hygiene campaign as well as other initiatives to reduce
avoidable infections overseen by the Scottish Government Health
Directorate to tackle Healthcare Associated Infections such as
MRSA. You may, for example, have seen the TV and newspaper
campaign that was launched in January 2009 and which ran for six
weeks.
We have also implemented a campaign aimed at the NHS staff in
Scotland to target good hand hygiene practice at staff, patients
and visitors. This part of the campaign includes audit of hand
hygiene compliance in NHS Boards. Audit reports are published on a
bi-monthly basis and can be viewed at the following link:
http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/haiic/ic/nationalhandhygienecampaign.aspx
Posters and leaflets for NHS Staff and visitors to NHS
healthcare environments continue to be refreshed on a regular basis
and can be accessed from The Campaign section of the website.