Health and safety legislation that affects care provision.

Health and Safety

Health and Safety at Work act (1974)

Health and Safety at Work is the umbrella of legislation for health and safety. HASAW is the main piece is legislation and it covers all the occupational for health and safety for the United Kingdom. Since the act as been in place the UK has been one of the lowest countries for accident rates. The HASAW act relates to people on work experience, people who are self employed, mobile workers, apprentices, home workers, employees and volunteers.

In a health and social care setting the employers need to carry out risk assessment before commencing for business and needs to be regularly updated. The employers are responsible for the employees, visitors and workers form organisations while they are on the premises. They also need make sure that there are health and safety policies written down and appoint someone to be responsible for health and safety; the employers need to write down all the incidents and accidents that take place on the premises. Employers need to make sure that the staff are fully trained and wear safety equipment when necessary. The employees need to take responsibilities for their own actions and need to do what is asked by the employers and what is needed to make sure that the work place is as safe as possible.

Manual Handling Regulations (1992)

The Manual Handling Regulations is to do with transporting or supporting of a load (including pulling lifting and carrying, etc) by bodily force or by hand. The regulations include anything thing that needs assistance of an individual to lift or support or move a load. The load could be either an object or a person. The employer is responsible for the employees to try and avoid manually handling. Service providers need to have attended a moving and handling course to learn how to use hoist, sliding boards, slings and other equipment correctly and safely. The employees also need to read the risk assessments to ensure that the service providers are safe and using equipment properly.

Data protection Act (1998)

The Data Protection Act is in place to ensure that all individuals are protected from the misuse of any personal data. It relates to all personal information held in paper and electronic format. Employers shouldn’t hold information that is not relevant and excessive and should only be obtained for lawful reasons which are accurate and current. Employees may have access to some of the service user’s data; the employees must never reveal any of the data to an unauthorised person, especially not over the telephone.

Food Safety Act (1990)

This act is in position to ensure the safety of all food provided to the service users are by trained staff. This act gives the environmental health inspectors the right to inspect food and to take away food unfit for human consumption. All establishments that violate food hygiene standards can be served a notice of improvement, closed temporally or in extreme circumstances permanently closed. The employees should attend food hygiene course to ensure that they know how to prepare, cook and store food correctly. They also need to know which coloured boards to use for which food products and label and date any opened food. Food Safety Act is so important in health and social care settings as some people may have allergies and it is vital for them not to eat what they are allergic to as they could die from it. The food also needs to be stored and cooked properly as if the food isn’t cooked right then the service users could have salmonella.

Reporting of injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations RIDDOR (1995)

This regulation is in place to ensure that any work related deaths, major injuries, and work related diseases and dangerous occurrences such as a person catching rubella at work and this could have spread around the employees, they are reported to the Health and Safety Executives (HSE). The people who have a legal duty to inform of any incidents are employers, the self employed or people in control of the premises. The act applies to all work activities but not all incidents are reportable. For example in health and ...

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Reporting of injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations RIDDOR (1995)

Control of Substances Hazardous to Health COSHH (2002)

The act is in position to protect employees and service users by preventing exposure to hazardous substances. Using chemicals and hazardous substances at work can put people’s health at risk which could cause diseases such as asthma, dermatitis or cancer. The regulations expect employers to take control of substances that can damage workers health. The main risk to service providers is the exposure to cleaning chemicals and bodily fluids such as blood, urine, faeces, saliva and vomit. These are hazards because if they are not dealt with people can slip over and hurt themselves and if any of them gets into another person’s body then they could get infected with toxins in the blood or vomit. Employers need to ensure that all procedures are followed correctly by staff and prepare plans to deal with accidents and incidents.

Policies

Fire evacuation

When a fire alarm sounds it is the staff’s responsibility in the college to make sure that the class that they are teaching gets to the fire assembly point quickly and safely. The staffs have to ensure that all pupils follow them out of the building to the safest and quickest assembly point there is. It is also the pupil’s responsibility to be as sensible and cooperative and to follow the teacher out of the building. The staff’s need to ensure that the fire exits are clear of any obstacles everyday and test the fire alarms a least once a week to certify that they are working correctly. A register needs to be taken after the pupils are out of the building to make certain that all pupils who where in the building are all out safely.

Food hygiene

When employers and employees are dealing with food they need to ensure that their hands are clean, hair tied up, aprons on and wear gloves where appropriate. To stop cross contamination the staff to need to make sure that they use the correct coloured cutting boards for each food source and use specific knives to lower the risk of cross contamination. Fridge and freezer temperatures need to be checked regularly to ensure that they are the right temperatures, as this could cause the food to rot or to become inedible.

Behaviour Management

In the college there are procedures to follow for a pupil who is having behaviour problems in class. There are 4 main stages of the behaviour management procedure and the first one is a minor and consists of poor attendance, failure to submit work to taking holiday in term time. The 2nd is a misconduct which is the second stage after the minor and involves accessing inappropriate material on IT network. After the second stage the third stage comes, the serious misconduct which includes minor vandalism, physically threatening others to intoxication with alcohol or drugs. The final stage of behaviour management is gross misconduct, which contains physical abuse and sales of drugs. It is the staff’s responsibility to put a pupil forward to the higher employers to give them a warning and put them onto a minor and so on.

Accident reporting

The employers need to ensure that they have an accident book as all accidents and incidents need to be kept as a record so that the insurances covers all of the incidents that occur in the workplace. It is the staff’s responsibility to fill out an accident report on a service user and an employer’s duty to fill out an accident report on an employee. It is important to keep a record of all the accident and incidents which occur in the workplace as it could take several years for an employee or employer to get prosecuted so it is important that a detail record is kept of the incident. Reporting accidents helps the workplace to become safer as faulty equipment will be repaired and a place in the work maybe less safe than some other pace meaning that the work place will be safer for the members of staff. Another reason why reporting accidents are good as if you don’t report a minor injury and the same accident happens again and is much worse than the consequences are worse as the insurance companies may not cover you.

Safeguarding

The safeguarding policies are in place to protect the service users from abuse. Employees have a duty to prevent stop and intervene abuse of any form where it is suspected or observed to be occurring. All employees and employers need to be CRB checked and if they do have any records to make sure they are looked into to see how long ago they occurred and what the incident was about. The employees need to report without any delay any suspected or observed abuse. Service users rely on service providers and employers to help them with various aspects of their lives. The Main reason why the policies are in place is to make people more aware on adult and child abuse and prevent abuse and neglect to the service users. All staff should attend a training course which helps them to identify abuse, prevent abuse and what the responsibilities are for the individuals that take care of the service users. It is the responsibility of all and the duty of all employees to protect all service users from abuse by relatives, staff, visitors and members of the public.

Lone Working

The lone working policy is in position to ensure that when staff are working alone that they do so in a way which is planned and as safe as it can be. Lone working intends in having trained staff that have been trained to work on their own with service users and that the staff know that they may be putting themselves at risk when lone working. It is the employers duty that the staff that are lone working are doing so safely and correctly and that the staff are fully aware of the lone working procedures. If staffs are regularly and routinely working alone then they should have appropriate mobile phone and alarms when working with all service users.

Part C

Safeguarding

While in a workplace the service users need to know what their rights are and who and where to go to if anything happens to them. The service users should be taught the difference between abuse and not abuse as some vulnerable adults and children don’t or have no clue of what is abuse and what isn’t. It is the management’s responsibility to talk to the service users regularly to ensure that everything is how it should be. The management should talk to the service users as some of the employees could be taking advantage of the service user’s vulnerability in more ways than one. All the people that work with vulnerable adults and children need to be CRB checked and all the criminal records (if they have any) need to be looked into and determined whether or not the person is ok to look after the service users. The mangers need to have an enthusiastic so they can inspire the staff to take a lot of pride in what they do. The managers do have a big influence on the quality of care delivered if they show the commitment at a high standard. All staff that start a new job, in a health and social care settings, should sign a contract stating that they will follow all of the policies and procedures and if the staff aren’t working towards the procedures and policies then training should be offered for the employee to learn, if not taken then the staff be disciplined for ignoring health and safety. The managers of the workplace on behalf of the employers have to take responsibility for the safety of staff, service users and visitors. It is the employer’s job to promote health and safety by following the policies and procedures for safeguarding the service users and ensure that there in place to meet all the legal requirements.

Manual Handling Regulations (1992)

It is the employees job to try an avoid any manual handling operations as much as they possibly can that may involve a possible injury. They need to ensure that they assess all manual handling operations that cannot be avoided as if they are not assessed properly and to the highest standard possible and they need to take steps to reduce any risk of injury during the operation that cannot be avoided. There are many ways in which employees can help reduce manual handling by:

Encourage people to do thing more independently when possible
Avoid repetitive lifts
Plan each and every lift
Try and use lifting aids wherever possible
Do not try and twist your body when lifting

More than a third of all reported injuries that are over three days are the form of manual handling, and about 10% of major injuries are result of manual handling.

One way to assess manual handling activities is to look at four areas – Task, Individual, Load and Environment (TILE).

Key factors to consider are:

1. The Task

Does the activity involve twisting, stooping, bending, excessive travel, pushing, pulling, or seated work?

2. The Individual

Does the individual require unusual strength or height for the activity, are they pregnant, disabled or suffering from a health problem.

3. The Load

Is the load heavy, unwieldy, difficult to grasp, sharp, hot, cold, difficult to grip, are the contents likely to move or shift?

4. The Environment

Are there uneven, slippery or unstable floors, variations in floor levels, extremely hot or cold conditions, poor lighting, poor ventilation, Personal Protective Equipment that restricts movement?

Data protection Act (1998)

Nowadays organisations use computers to store information about service users and staff in databases. For example they would include

Their name
Their address
contact information
medical conditions
convictions
credit history

People nowadays are extremely technology clever meaning that they can easily access database and change what is written. The Data Protection Act was developed to give protection and lay down rules about how data about people can be used. Some of the data that’s stored on a computer is personal and needs to be kept confidential. People want to keep their pay, bank details, and medical records private.

There are two main types of data:

Personal data which includes: their name address and medical/banking details. The other is sensitive personal data which includes: racial origin, political opinions, religion, health, sex life and criminal records.

Food hygiene

Food hygiene polices are vial for the prevention of cross contamination and food poisoning. Any person can get food poisoning but some people are more venerable and can contract other serious symptoms as they may have weaker immune systems than other people. Food hygiene is essential when cooking for service users as some of them can be very venerable as they may not be able to tell if the food is coked right or may not be able to say whether the food may be correct or not.

Maintaining high levels of personal and kitchen hygiene are important, this could be possible if the staff:

Wash staff hands and nails with hot, soapy water before handling food and between handling cooked and uncooked foods, and after going to the toilet.
Rinse your hands well and dry them on a clean hand towel, a disposable paper towel
Wipe down and disinfect surfaces and utensils regularly
Wash up using hot, soapy water
Don't handle food if you have any slight illness.
Cover up cuts and sores with waterproof plasters.
If possible, remove rings, watches and bracelets before handling food
Use different coloured chopping boards when using different foods
Store food correctly by looking at labels to decide where to put the each food.
Make sure that the fridge is at 5 degrees and the freezer is at 18 degrees.