Health, Safety and Security in Health and Social Care
Outline how legislation, policies and procedures relating to health, safety and security influence health and social care settings (P2) Legislation | Summary | Disability Discrimination Act (1995) | The aim of the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 is to ensure that individuals in society who are disabled are treated in a similar way to those who are not disabled to ensure that equality standards are reached. This act attempts to enforce providers of facilities and services to make it accessible. It is therefore unlawful to make a place inaccessible for a disabled person. The act aims to give people with disabilities rights in certain areas of employment, education, access to goods and buying properties. In the prevision of health and social care, it is our aim to try and make all areas accessible for people with disabilities. | Manual Handling Operations Regulations (1992) | This is to ensure that an employer helps to avoid employees being injured by performing any manual handling operations. It is done by recreating the task to avoid moving the product, the employer must take steps to reduce the risk on their employees and to make any hazard risk as low as possible. There are three steps –Avoid – avoid the need for hazardous manual handling.Assess – the risks involvedReduce – the risk of injury.In health and care this piece of legislation protects the individuals who are working as it ensures that they do not injure themselves when lifting heavy specialist equipment. And it ensures that all risks are reduced when it comes to lifting specialist equipment. | Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrence Regulations (1995)(RIDDOR) | Is the requirement for reporting any injury, death, disease, incidents involving gas. An employer has an accident book and there is certain things the reporter has to mention such as time and date, person affected, full name, occupation and the nature of injury. This is as the issue may be taken to court in the future. It covers big companies and those who are self-employed. This is important in a disability school as if one child has a contagious virus he/she has the potential to spread that virus to other children – especially if those children are more at risk. It is made that anyone who witnesses these symptoms to report them to higher staff or management. | Data Protection Act (1998) | The data protection act allows you the right to know what information is held by other companies about you. It also sets down strict rules for the other company to follow about portrayal of this information.It is an important piece of legislation in a disability school as the children who attend are vulnerable and they need their private information to be held and kept safe. This act is important as to help service users keep, make and maintain trust with their care environment. | | Provision and use of Work Equipment Regulations(1998) | This places duties on people and companies who own or operate equipment. It also applies to whom uses the equipment whether they do own it or not. This regulation requires that the provided equipment must be suitable for use and it must be only used by the people who have the correct training.If the children in the school have to be moved from their wheel chair into another chair it is important that staff know how to manipulate the equipment to provide comfort for the child who needs to be moved. | | | Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (1999) | The main point of this legislation is to encourage employees to be more organised approach to working when dealing with health and safety in all their workplaces. In all workplaces there must be a care plan set in place for accidents, if they do happen. Care workers should always revise the care plans regularly, they should be ready to change the care plan and manipulate it in order for the service user to get maximum use of the care service. It helps the school environment to attempt to run smoothly - without these regulations in place it would be harder on the care workers and service users. It would be a difficult and disorganised environment. | Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) | | This piece of legislation is made to promote, stimulate and encourage high standards of health and safety in places of work. All employers must comply with this legislation by maintaining safety for employees using any equipment, by providing the correct training, information and instruction. In a disabled school environment the staff must have all the correct training and information to ensure that the children’s safety is put first at all times. For example if the staff aren’t given the correct information about the children who are in their care they have the possibility of giving the vulnerable children the wrong treatment or they could give them an incorrect administer of medication which could put them more at risk than they already are. The safest way to go about looking after the children is having the correct information on their condition and having the correct medication on hand. | | Lifting and Operations Equipment Regulations (1998) | This piece of legislation requires that all equipment used for lifting is fit and ready for its purpose. It needs to be appropriate for the task and that is examined regularly and suitably marked and labelled showing precautions for any employee to use it. Any lifting operations involving equipment must be planned to avoid injury and to ensure it’s carried out in a safe manner. If a child who uses a wheel chair in the school needs to be lifted out, for example a swimming lesson, the staff must use training and initiative to plan how to lift them out of their chair and into the poolside chair. |