As a home care provider, health and safety is an important element of how we plan, view and deliver our care service. We need to make sure that our staff are safe in their working environments and we constantly risk assess our working activities, as well as the client's home environment, so that our duties are performed safely.
Ensuring our staff are safe in their work space is tricky because this is usually the person's home and there are no simple solutions here.
However, our specialised training programme initially teaches them their job role and responsibilities and then enables them to build on their knowledge and gain experience and competency.
Currently, we believe we are the only social care provider who has their training approved by an internationally recognised health and safety body, the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (iiRSM). We specifically sought out this accreditation because we recognise the importance of health and safety in social care.
In fact, it is only when staff receive the correct training do they make the link between health and safety and their work.
This year the awareness day is focussing on young workers between the ages of 16-24 and whilst we do have staff in that age range, anyone who is 16-18 years of age cannot lone work and therefore will only be assigned to double-handed visits with an experienced member of staff. That said, we do deliver plenty of double-handed visits so there is a way to coach and mentor young staff and ensure they are adhering to all our health and safety in care procedures. We then support them to become well qualified and excellent lone workers once they reach the age of 18.
Even though we are a franchised business with more than 95 UK offices, we are still one team with one goal…to create the mark of excellent safe care throughout our network.
By creating the mark of excellence we will always create safe working environments.