Positive environments

When doing a risk assessment, 5 steps are followed:

1. Identify the hazards. If you walk around the care setting looking for the hazards, this may be really helpful. Also asking your employees if they have noticed anything that may cause harm.
2.  Decide who might be harmed. Children, staff, parents, cleaners and visitors.
3. You must evaluate the risks. When you have noticed all the hazards you should then think ‘what can I do to minimise the risk of an accident happening?’ If a door is left open, and it cannot be locked, then get someone to stand at it, like a guard, also providing welfare facilities is very important.
4. Record your findings and take them into consideration. For example if there is rubbish always on the ground, give someone the job to pick it up and they could receive an award at the end of the year  for doing this, this encourages children to take part in helping the care setting.
5. Review you assessment and revise if necessary. After a few weeks, you should look over what happened and see if it may have happened again.

An example of a hazard may be an outdoor climbing from in the playground. Children may be harmed by this if:

• Children who may not be comfortable climbing on the frame.
• Children who may be wearing the wrong clothes or footwear.
• Children may slip on various weather types, e.g. if it’s raining.

A daily routine check is done every morning before the children arrive in the care setting. There is a list that needs to be ticked off everyday. Here is an example:

An example of the daily checklist for the outdoor area.

When it comes to outings in the care setting, there is a potentially high risk for accidents, as there is a routine change, all the children are exited and there is lack of familiarity with the place they are going.

In a venue, it would be prone to accidents as there may be barriers that are broken, unfenced water, toilet facilities that may be dirty and not cleaned on a regular basis.

On the other hand on the transport to the venue it would be clean and secure.

Some venues that you may go to don’t have risk assessments but usually places like Zoo’s and aquariums do. Here is an example of a Zoo Risk Assessment form.