The purpose of this course is to give you an awareness of the risk assessment process that is intended to reduce the likelihood and severity of accidents happening in the workplace, and to teach you your role in health and safety in an early years setting.
‘All employers must by law establish good Health and Safety procedures within the workplace’.
This statement, made law by the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 made owners and operators of all places of work legally responsible for protecting the health and safety of workers, customers and other visitors to the site. Every task that staff were expected to do needed to be risk-assessed, with adequate training, monitoring and protective equipment provided.
Fast forward to the present day and the early years sector, this makes the setting operator, the management team and the early years practitioners collectively responsible for the health, safety and wellbeing of themselves, colleagues and children in their care.
Every early years setting must:
The Early Years Foundation Stage is the statutory framework for early years education in England. The EYFS lays down the legal requirements that early years providers must meet. One aspect is safeguarding and welfare requirements which covers what you must do to keep children safe and promote their welfare.
Your employer should supply you this information, offer you appropriate training, and support you in your job so that you have someone to refer to with any queries or concerns. If you haven’t received all of this, speak to your supervisor or manager now.
Health and safety law is enforced and investigated by two main bodies:
EHOs deal with a range of health and safety issues including food safety. The HSE deals with the more serious potential offences such as investigating allegations of dangerous conditions, injuries and deaths.
EHOs and HSE officers have the power to:
The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. They inspect and regulate services which care for children and young people. For early years providers its primary job is to inspect the quality of provision against the EYFS requirements, make recommendations for improvements, and arrive at an overall judgement.
Ofsted has the power to:
Ofsted inspectors are likely to ask practitioners about health and safety issues as they work in the environment. Why? Because what you understand and do ‘on the ground in practice’ day in, day out is perhaps a greater measure of how safe an early years environment really is than a shelf full of well documented but barely read policies and processes.
Due diligence is a legal term to describe how robust a legal defence is likely to be in the event of a health and safety related prosecution. In simple terms, this means have you done everything within your power that you can reasonably be expected to do. According to UK law, not knowing or understanding the minimum standards expected of you by law, is not a legal defence. This is a really important point to understand.
In an early years setting, due diligence is professional and legal responsibility to take all reasonable steps to ensure the health, safety, and well-being of the children in your care.