Child Care First Aid in Calgary, with CPR-B

It is a two-day, in-person course with CPR at Level B included, so you are not booking and paying for CPR separately. The Canadian Red Cross sets the hour requirement and it can change, so work from the exact hours and daily start times published with the run you are booking rather than from this page. There is no prerequisite and no prior first aid assumed. The Red Cross lists no pre-course requirements for this course at all, which means no minimum age, and we do not put an upper age limit on any course we run. There is one Delta rule that is not an age limit: anyone under 18 has to be registered by a parent or guardian, who accepts the registration policies on their behalf, and learners under 16 do not hold their own portal account.

What separates it from the general workplace first aid course is not difficulty, it is focus. This one is built around infants and children: smaller airways, smaller bodies, a patient who cannot tell you what is wrong, and a caregiver who is usually the only adult in the room. You may see it listed elsewhere as Standard Child Care First Aid; the certificate is issued as the Canadian Red Cross Child Care First Aid and CPR certificate. The Red Cross sets how long it stays valid, currently three years, and the exact expiry date is printed on the certificate you are issued.

The curriculum belongs to the Canadian Red Cross and we teach to it, so the lesson list is theirs to publish and not ours to paraphrase. If a licensing officer, an accreditation binder or a program supervisor needs the current official course description, ask us and we will send you to the Canadian Red Cross's own page for it. Broadly, this is a paediatric-focused first aid and CPR course, and you receive the Red Cross material as part of your registration.

What Delta adds is context. Our instructors have gone to these calls for real, at three in the afternoon, in a room with seven other children in it. So when someone asks how hard you actually push on an eleven-month-old, or what to do when a parent arrives before the ambulance does, the answer comes from someone who has stood in that room.

Licensed child care in Alberta has its own first aid requirements. They come from provincial child care licensing and they are interpreted by your licensing officer, your agency or your employer. We will not tell you that this course satisfies them, and you should be wary of any training provider that does, because that is not a claim a training company is in a position to make about your specific position and your specific licence.

So ask, and ask precisely. Get six things from whoever set the requirement: the exact course name they will accept, the CPR level required, the number of hours or days, whether a particular certifying body is required, whether it has to be delivered in person, and whether the certificate has to still be valid on a particular date. Get it in writing if a job, a licence renewal or an inspection depends on it.

Then send that wording to us before you register, and we will tell you honestly whether this is the course that matches it. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the wording actually describes the general workplace certificate rather than the child care one. And sometimes the honest answer is that this is not the right course for you, in which case we would rather say so than take your money. That conversation costs you an email and saves you a weekend.

One trap worth naming on its own. This course carries CPR at Level B. If the wording you were handed names CPR-C, or names Basic Life Support, those are different levels with different names on the certificate, and a licensing officer or a hiring manager reading a card is reading the name on it. Check the level before you pay, not after.

The clearest fit is anyone whose working day is spent with small children. Licensed centre staff and program supervisors, early childhood educators, day home operators, out-of-school and preschool care staff, nannies and private caregivers, camp counsellors and recreation programmers. If your patient is going to be a two-year-old, train on a two-year-old rather than on an adult manikin and hope the skills transfer.

It also suits people with no requirement at all. Parents of infants, grandparents doing regular care, an aunt who has the baby two days a week. Nobody has asked you for a certificate and nobody is going to inspect it. You are welcome in the room anyway, and you would not be the only person there without a requirement to meet.

Some people should look elsewhere, and we would rather say so here than at the door. If what you have been asked for is a general workplace first aid certificate with CPR-C, that is our Intermediate First Aid course, which the Canadian Red Cross previously called Standard First Aid. The name on the card changed; if your requirement was written using the old name, send us the wording and we will confirm which certificate matches it. If your role is clinical or care-facing and the wording says Basic Life Support or healthcare provider CPR, this is not that course and the two are not interchangeable. And if the person who needs training is a young teen who babysits occasionally rather than a paid child care worker, ask us first, because a shorter youth-focused option may be the better purchase.

If you cannot tell which bucket you are in, that is normal. The naming across first aid courses in this country is genuinely confusing, and it has been changed more than once. Describe what you do all day and we will sort out which course that is.

This is a hands-on course and you will spend most of it on the floor. Expect to be on your knees, working on infant and child manikins, doing the same skill again after your instructor corrects you, and then doing it again until your hands know it without your head being involved. The skills that matter in a real emergency are physical, and they do not survive being learned from a screen.

The scenarios are built the way these calls actually unfold in a child care setting, which is to say badly. One adult, several children, incomplete information, a child who was fine ten minutes ago, and a phone that you now have to use while your hands are busy. We spend deliberate time on the parts that never make it into a course description: who watches the other children while you work, what you tell the 911 dispatcher so they send the right thing, how to keep a panicking coworker useful, what to say to a parent on the phone, and what goes in the incident record afterwards.

There is no pretence that any of this is comfortable. Practising infant CPR is upsetting for most people the first time, particularly for anyone who has a small child of their own. Instructors know that and they teach around it rather than through it. Nobody is embarrassed for finding it hard, and it gets easier with repetition, which is precisely why the course is built on repetition.

You will also get the honest version of what to expect from the emergency response itself, from people who are the emergency response. Response times, what crews want handed to them at the door, and what actually happens after the ambulance leaves. That context is the part students say they remember years later.

Attending the course is not the same as being certified. Certification requires full attendance and a demonstrated, evaluated performance of the required skills, with both written and hands-on components. Your instructor watches you throughout rather than testing you once at the end, so weak spots surface early enough to fix. Nobody is passed on effort, and a card that does not reflect real ability is no use to you and less use to the child who needs you.

Tell us early if you already know you will miss a stretch of day one or day two. A day home operator juggling coverage is not an unusual problem and we have solved it before. What we can offer narrows as the two days go on, so a Tuesday email beats a Thursday one, and we would far rather rearrange something with you in advance than tell you at the end that we cannot certify you.

We are bringing this course onto the new schedule now. It runs in person in Calgary, and we are adding Leduc dates for the greater Edmonton region. Dates are not on the calendar yet, so tell us the window you need and we will let you know when one lands, or we will arrange a private run for your team. Ask us for the current per-seat fee, what is included, and the refund and transfer terms, and we will confirm them in writing before you register. Do not treat any number you find on a third-party page as our current price.

For a whole staff team, ask about onsite delivery. We can bring the course to your centre, your school, your agency or your day home network anywhere in Alberta for an additional fee that covers travel and instructor time, and we travel elsewhere in Canada and internationally on request. Onsite is the same course with the same evaluations. Tell us your group size, your location and the window you are trying to hit, and we will tell you what is workable rather than promising something that is not.

Deal with the expiry date on the day you get the certificate. The Canadian Red Cross sets the validity period, currently three years, and the exact date is printed on your certificate. Put it in your calendar with a reminder three months ahead. In licensed child care the expiry usually matters to somebody other than you, and discovering it lapsed during an inspection or a hiring check is a bad way to find out.

We do not currently list a separate short recertification course for Child Care First Aid, so do not assume a quick refresher will be waiting for you. Contact us before your certificate expires and we will tell you what the current renewal route actually is. Getting in touch early costs nothing and gives you options that a lapsed card does not.

Register with your legal name spelled exactly the way your employer, your agency or your licensing file expects to see it. This matters more here than on most courses, because the certificate is going into somebody else's paperwork and a mismatched name creates a problem months later. A certificate reprinted to fix a spelling takes weeks; typing it correctly at registration takes seconds.

Come dressed to work: clothes you can kneel, crouch and lie down in, closed shoes, hair tied back. Bring water, a lunch or a plan for one, and something to write with. If you are pregnant, have a back, knee or shoulder issue, have a hearing or mobility consideration, or English is not your first language, tell us before the course rather than on the morning. The required skills do have to be demonstrated, but how we get you there is flexible, and it is far easier to plan for in advance than to improvise at two in the afternoon.

Your fee includes a hard-shell pocket mask: the real clamshell mouth-to-mask device, with the one-way filter valve, the elastic strap and the case. It comes out of its packaging in class, you train with it on the manikins, and then it goes home with you.

Nobody hands you a mask another class used and wiped down. Yours is new, and after the course it lives wherever you might one day need it: the kitchen drawer, the glovebox, the first aid kit at work.

The Canadian Red Cross child care program has two tiers, and the names matter. Emergency Child Care First Aid is the one-day, eight-hour course built around the life-threatening core. This course, Standard Child Care First Aid, is the two-day, sixteen-hour tier: the same foundation, then the time to go wider and deeper across the injuries and sudden illnesses that come with caring for infants and children. Both carry CPR Level B.

Which one you need is usually not your choice to make: child care licensing wording, an agency, or an employer names a tier, and the word to look for in your paperwork is Emergency or Standard. If the wording names Standard, the one-day course will not satisfy the person who wrote it. Send us the exact sentence you were given and we will confirm the match before you pay for either.

Public sessions run in Calgary, with dates in Leduc through the year.

We also deliver this course at your worksite for groups, useful for crews who can’t release staff to travel. Onsite delivery carries an additional fee on top of per-person pricing. Request an onsite quote.

We travel for private and group training across Canada, and internationally by arrangement. If you’re outside Alberta, tell us where you are and we’ll price it.