What We Do
Building on our vision for all children to have the right to a safe sleeping environment, we believe providing all caregivers with knowledge and understanding of safe sleeping practices will protect children from harm.
Infants sleep an average of 11 to 14 hours a day, so it is critical to ensure a safe sleep environment for every sleep by every carer.
The community needs to be alert to the risks involved with unsafe sleeping practices.
Below is a brief description of the services Soteria Safe Sleeping Advice offers.
Soteria Safe Sleeping Advice offers all caregivers - parents, babysitters, professional childhood education and care services, health professionals and others - scientific, evidence-based information on safe sleeping practices.
-
The Community - we present at community events such as Expos and answer caregivers' questions and concerns
-
Childhood education and care services - through Soteria's offering a range of workshops, webinars and eLearning packages, educators can understand the reason behind the Safe Sleeping recommendations
-
Health professionals - to support midwives, maternal child health nurses and other health professionals in influencing new parents to practise safe sleeping for their infants, Soteria conducts in-service presentations and presents at industry conferences.
Although childcare centres may know and understand safe sleeping practices, best practice suggests that performing an audit at regular intervals provides a benchmark to record continuous improvement in the workplace.
Soteria Safe Sleeping Advice has developed a number of tools to assist in this area including checklists for the sleeping space in centres and policy and procedure compliance.
Soteria Safe Sleeping Advice's aim is to ensure a consistent, scientific evidence-based message is given to all caregivers, the community and health professionals. We have developed safe sleeping modules for industry leaders in child safety education and serve on numerous advisory boards and steering committees for child safety organisations, researchers and others interested in child safety, particularly the safe sleeping environment.
Undertaking advocacy has been an integral part of the work our team has driven in previous roles. This is no less important with Soteria Safe Sleeping Advice's contribution being requested from bodies such as Consumer Affairs Victoria, the ACCC and others.