Using examples from work experience, evaluate the effectiveness of policies and procedures for promoting health, safety and security.

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D1. Using examples from work experience, evaluate the effectiveness of policies and procedures for promoting health, safety and security.

Policies and procedures are very effective. In the following assignment I will evaluate the effectiveness of policies and procedures for promoting health, safety and security.

Policy states “all accidents are to be recorded in the company’s accident book at the particular place of work.” (Bright Horizons, 2008, Bright Horizons Family Solutions Health, Safety and Welfare Policy. This policy is very effective. Due to this policy if a child in a nursery was to hurt themselves, staff would have to deal with it according to policy and procedures. They would deal with it using their first aid training and then writing it up in the incident book (what happened and how they dealt with it) and report it to the child’s parent. If this policy was not there staff would deal with the child according to their own ideas and the way they think it is best and instead of making things better, they may make the situation worse. They would not write it up in the accident book, because the accident book would not even exist, because there would be no policy saying that every nursery must have one. They might not tell the child’s parent, because they would be afraid of what the parent would say and if the parent would take further action. Therefore this could get the nursery and themselves into severe trouble. The child or the child’s parent could say that the staff caused the injury on purpose and because there is no report to show evidence that the staff did not do it, further severe procedures could be taken. This would cause many problems for the staff and the nursery, therefore this policy is effective, because it ensures that staff and the nursery are not at risk and that children are not at further risk.

This follows on to another policy which states “ensuring that all company facilities are fit for purpose and, as far as reasonably practicable, safe and without risks to the safety and health of children, employees, visitors, clients, contractors, and other persons who may be affected by the company’s activities.” (Bright Horizons, 2008, Bright Horizons Family Solutions Health, Safety and Welfare Policy, pp3). In order for this to take place risk assessments must be carried out. In a care home, the job for carrying out risk assessments will be given to the staff, “appoint competent people (often themselves or company colleagues) to help them to implement the arrangements.” (Stretch, et al, 2007, pp122). That is one of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 policies. The risks assessments are carried out to identify the risks and hazards and to plan ways to minimise the risks from happening. Each staff would be in charge of assessing the risks of different things, for example the risk assessment for manual handling may be done by the senior care worker. The risk assessment can be done for indoor or outdoor. A risk in a care home could be the service user getting into the bath. Therefore they would follow it up with meetings that the employer would hold, to discuss the ways in which they could minimise the risk of the service user getting into the bath. In the meeting they would firstly discuss the risk and why it has occurred, through this they would know the way in which to deal with it. Secondly according to policy they would follow the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, however not every staff has this training. Therefore they would identify who does and who doesn’t and those who don’t would be sent on a training course. This is linked to another policy which states that the employee must be given the opportunity to go on training. However staff at a nursery may be more available to go to training than staff at a hospital, because they may have less to deal with and worry about. For example though there are more staff at the hospital, the staff there have to deal with more life threatening situations. On the other hand nursery staffs rarely have to deal with life threatening situations, so are more able to come out of the nursery for training and this is where the effectiveness of the policy kicks in. Due to the nursery surroundings, being smaller than the hospital surroundings it is expected that the risks in a nursery will be less than at a hospital. Therefore the risk assessment identifies the risks in both surroundings and enables staff from both environments, to take action through meetings. This would allow them to identify how to impede the risks from occurring, or how to decrease the risk. Therefore this would allow surroundings to be safer for service users.

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Nevertheless during their meeting they can discuss other ideas of minimising the risk of service user getting in to the bath, such as a special chair, within the bath, if the person is disabled. They could also place bath handles at the side of the bath so that the service user has balance and support to get within the bath.

In some way the policies link together. The risk assessment is carried out and identifies the risk (in a care home the service user getting into the bath), as the risk is linked to the manual handling, ...

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