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Now, we're now going to look at childhood illnesses and accidents, and just go over the sorts of things that can affect children. Now, we're here in a school, so one obvious thing here could be the normal bugs that pass through between children. It may well be a child has picked up a cold or an infection from another child, so what we need to do is be aware of these things and look at children and see, is there something wrong with them, or if they're acting out of character at all. It may be that a poorly child is very, very quiet or grumpy or maybe they're looking very sweaty, hot, or just out of character, so being observant is really important with children.

The other thing with children and illnesses, typically with an adult, they'll slowly get steadier and steadier worse, whereas a child, they sort of go along, they're keeping well, then suddenly they drop off. Now, with the more serious illnesses, then, this can be quite a shock for people, because one minute you're dealing with a child who's just mildly unwell, and then suddenly they get a lot worse.

Looking at other types of illnesses children have, these would be things like asthma or diabetes or food allergies, anaphylaxis. Now, these are sorts of things you should, whether you're working in a school or you're a childminder or a nanny, you would know what's wrong with the child beforehand, so you need to do your homework. You need to find out what child has what condition. And then you need to monitor them. If you think there's a child particularly at risk of something, maybe you're out and about playing sports, then asthma could be a problem. Eating food or with lots of insects around, anaphylaxis could be an issue. Or you could be talking about something like sickle cell, which can affect children by all different ways, so be aware of children's signs and symptoms the whole time.

The next thing with children is, they're not always able to communicate very well. It may be you ask them what's wrong with them, and they don't really give you exact answers, so ask clever questions and try and get them to point to where it hurts or where they feel bad or feel unwell. Now, the same would apply when dealing with accidents. It may well be that the child shouldn't have actually been playing where they were, so it may be that they come into contact with a poison, but they're not telling you that they've been in an area they weren't supposed to be. Again, careful, look and ask other children to try and find out what's actually happened.

There are also accidents children can have. In a classroom environment like this you think, "Oh, it's fairly safe." But yeah, they could fall over, they could trip over, they could slip. They can hurt themselves in different ways. But also out and about. Now, typical sorts of injuries that children have are head injuries, often lack balance sometimes or not paying attention. They fall over, break their arm, or damage their arm, cuts, bruises. All these sorts of things are quite common with children. And then most of the time they're not going to be an area where it's going to be a very serious emergency. However, be observant the whole time. Even the smallest knock on the head. Look at it, find out what's happened, how it happened, and whether you think there's going to be any risk later on. Be aware with children. Look out the whole time. Look for dangers continually, the whole time you're working with children, before and after play. Do a mini risk-assessment to find out exactly what risks you think the child could come across and do what you can to reduce those risks.