Health and Safety in Health and Social Care Workplace

This report discusses the implementation of health and safety legislation in health and social care workplaces, the monitoring and review of health and safety measures, and the impact of health and safety on customers and practitioners. It also highlights the importance of communication and the responsibilities of health and safety officers. The report concludes with an evaluation of the health and safety needs for staff and service users.

Health and Safety in Health
and Social Care Workplace

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
Activity 1.........................................................................................................................................4
LO1 Implementation of Health and Safety legislation in Health and Social Care Workplace. . .4
Review of system, policy and procedures for communicating information on health and
safety to staff and service users...............................................................................................4
Assessment of responsibilities for the management of health and safety within the structure5
Three Areas of Priority............................................................................................................6
LO3 Monitoring and Review Health and Safety at the Health and Social care workplace.........7
Monitoring and Review...........................................................................................................7
Effectiveness of Health and Safety policies in promotion of positive and healthy work
culture......................................................................................................................................8
Evaluation of health and safety needs for Staff, Service users................................................9
Activity 2.......................................................................................................................................10
LO2 Ways in which Health and Safety impact customers and the work of practitioners in the
health and social care workplace...............................................................................................10
Assessment of Risk................................................................................................................10
Information from risk assessment informs care planning for individual and organisational
decision making about policies and procedure......................................................................10
Impact of the risk assessment policy and practice in place at Slade House on Connor and his
family.....................................................................................................................................11
Dilemmas encountered in relation to implementing systems and policies for health, safety
and security may be addressed..............................................................................................11
Effect of non-compliance with health and safety legislation in a health and social care......12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Concerned with workplace of individual health and safety are important measures. This is
a multidisciplinary field which is concerned with health and safety of the individuals at their
workplace. Like any other workplace this health and safety is equally important as health and
social care workplace. This report will discuss about health and safety in health and social care
workplace and what are the legislation that are implemented to health and social care workplace
regarding health and safety. Legislation provides standards and measures which are required to
be followed by workplace and they are least requirements regarding health and safety in health
and social care workplace. Later monitoring and review at the health and social care workplace
will be discussed in this report regarding health and safety measures which has been taken in the
workplace. This report will discuss about ways in which health and safety requirements impact
on customers and work of practitioners in health and social care workplace. Health and safety in
the health and social care workplace is very important as this not only can impact the users of the
service but it will also impact the practitioners because they are always associated with high risk
to health and safety while providing services in Slade House.
Activity 1
LO1 Implementation of Health and Safety legislation in Health and Social Care Workplace
Review of system, policy and procedures for communicating information on health and
safety to staff and service users
This is very important that health and social care workplace has implemented regulations
and legislations regarding health and safety in the workplace. Along with one of the important
requirement is that these are communicated to the staff and service users. This is important
because health and safety is for them and this will ensure that they are aware with health and
safety measures which are required to be taken care by them (Nikolic and et.al., 2018). Staff of
the health and care facilities gets involved in care of the service users and at that they are
required to inform about measures they are required to take regarding care of the service users.
Staff is also required to communicated about what measures they are required to take for their

own safety while they are working at health and care service. Regarding system policy and
procedure for communicating information in health and safety Slade House, staff at the Slade
House is informed about safety and health measures when they join the care centre. Along with
they are given with specific guidelines regarding their specific work practices and safety
measures they are required to take in while they are working. They are communicated during
their induction and initial training before they actually start working at the care centre.
This is part of policy that service users are also are communicated about the safety measures they
are requires to take care of and they are told about what they should do to avoid any harm to their
health (Keeler and Shaw, 2018). Slade House service users are mostly with learning disability
and this is why they are required to remind about what they should not do in order to avoid any
harm to their health. Some of the important safety legislations which are applicable to health and
social care centres are;
Health and Safety at Work Act 1974- covers issues related to workplace, health, safety and
welfare at different sectors and this is also applicable to health and social care workplace.
Manual Handling operations regulations 1992 – This is concerned with those people who has
limited mobility are required to assist safely to move and transfer. This involves that this is done
with respect and dignity.
Control of Substances Hazardous to Health 2002- This is regarding cleaning material and
medication which may be dangerous if not used properly.
Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995
Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981
Food Safety Act 1990, Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995 and Food Safety
(Temperature Control) Regulations 1995
These are regulations and legislations which are required to be followed at the health and
care workplace and the same should be communicated to staff and concerned people.

Assessment of responsibilities for the health and safety officer within the structure
Health and safety officer in structure has specific responsibilities concerned with health
and safety in the health and social care centre. This is because in case of any negligence and not
following the regulations it will be Health and safety officer along with the organisation who will
be held responsible and accountable for improper management of the health and social care
centre. Some of the responsibilities of management regarding this are;
Competency of the practitioners- This is first responsibility of the Health and safety officer of
Slade House that they ensure that practitioners working in the care centre are competent enough
that they can be made responsible for the health and safety of the service users (Leso, Fontana
and Iavicoli, 2018). Regarding management at Slade House should take all the measures to
ensure including their background check. This will ensure that management employing
competent people who have fair and clear record. This is more important in case of Slade House
because its service users are with learning disabilities and they require specific attention of
practitioners. Health and safety officer should ensure that practitioners being appointed in the
organisation are capable and have knowledge regarding health and safety in health and social
care organisation. This is important so that they can take care of their safety and that of patients
and care takers.
Care Quality- This is another responsibility of the management of Slade House that they ensure
best quality of care and if they are providing care in different forms it is responsibility of
management that they confirm about care quality from the service user. Quality in care should
also ensure minimum waste of resources, least chances of accidents and better provision for
patients. Health and safety officer should ensure that quality of care involves proper practices
regarding safety and health of care givers and care takers.
Ethical Code- This is another responsibility of the management at Slade House that they
maintain ethical code of conduct. This ensures that even in case service user and patient is
unaware of anything wrong which is being happen with them, management and practitioners
ensure that they do not undertake any activity which is unfair with the user of service. Health and
safety officer should ensure that along with following legal regulations regarding health and
safety in the organisations they should take this as ethical responsibility of employees regarding
patients.

Communication with service users- This is another important responsibility of the management
at Slade House that they keep adequate communication with service user. This is to ensure that
service user is aware about what treatment and service is being provided to the user.
Three Areas of Priority
Area of priority refers to those areas which are most important to be considered in health
and social care service (Leitão and Greiner, 2017). Some of the areas which are required to be
kept at priority by Health and safety officer at Slade House are;
Record Keeping- Record keeping refers to maintain data regarding user of service and activities
of the care home. This is important because records provide reference for future actions related
to service which is being required to provide to user of the service. For example keeping record
related to medicines which are provided to user on daily basis will ensure that they have been
given particular dose and will be required to give another dose. This will allow that more than
one practitioner can take care of user.
Safety Aids- Safety aid involves that care unit ensures that there are proper aids of safety in case
of any emergency requirement. Safety aids involve aids for fire safety. Maintaining equipments
required for managing safety requirement in case any hazardous material is used by practitioner
and user.
Security and Maintenance- This means maintaining all the measures for security in the Slade
House this means that they have installed system for monitoring all the activities of Slade House
(Morris and et.al., 2018). Maintenance means maintaining the facility so that possibilities of any
accident is least and along with this also ensuring proper cleanliness and facility management so
that any type of accident can be avoided.
LO3 Monitoring and Review Health and Safety at the Health and Social care workplace
Monitoring and review helps in ensuring that health and safety in the Slade House is well
maintained and all the regulations concerned with health and safety are being properly
maintained and implemented in the Slade House.

Monitoring and Review
Risk Audit- Risk Audit is an act of official inspection of the organisations practices and what are
the risks associated with these. This is generally done by independent body and third party that
help in ensuring what are the risks in Slade House. This is because audit of risk will contribute in
analysing what are the risks involved in practices of the Slade House and what measures are
required to take in order to prevent occurrence of risk and its effects on the health and safety of
the Slade House.
Review of Practice- This means analysing and reviewing practice, practice means practices that
are undertaken in Slade House. Review of practice will help in analysing what are the practices
and how they are being carried out. This will identify any type of flaws in the practice and also
identify scope of improvement in the practice.
Learning from experience- This is very obvious that experience gives best learning and this
involves reviewing experience which has occurred in Slade House (Gahan and Silins, 2020).
Experiences are mostly those experience which are unique in nature and has occurred for the first
time. Experience of the event that has occurred can either be good or bad. In case of good
experience it can be continued as a new learning. In case of bad experience Slade House should
ensure that such event does not occur again and learning is kept always.
Process of updating of policies and procedure- Policies and procedure are required to be
updated and above mentioned all the factor might require changes in policies and procedure of
Slade House. Risk audit may highlight any factor which requires changes in the policy and
procedure, review of practice can also highlight any practice which requires to be improved and
lastly experience can also develop need to change policy and procedure of the company. other
than this changes in regulation can also be subject to changes in policy and procedure of Slade
House. Process of updating involves developing and modifying policy and procedure, approval
from authorities and changing policy and procedure.
Effectiveness of Health and Safety policies in promotion of positive and healthy work
culture
Regarding effectiveness of policies and procedure Slade House health and safety at Slade
House is overall effective and this can be said on the basis of inspection of the Care Quality

Commission. According to their inspection of Slade House overall summary and rating of the
Slade House was good. This overall summary and rating involved safety, effectiveness, caring,
responsive and well-led (Albahri and et.al., 2018). The report of Slade House involved that
safety at Slade House is good which means that it is a safe place for both workers and service
users and this also states that policies of safety are also effective in Slade House that it promote
healthy and positive work culture and people take care of the safety measures at Slade House.
The report states that last report of Slade House also has a good rating and Slade House
continued to follow the same practices and this is the reason that it’s rating in the report were
again good. Another important point stated in the report is that there is no serious risk was found
in the monitoring of Slade House.
Regarding promotion of healthy and positive work culture its policies are effective and culture of
the care of caring and which means that its overall culture of positive. Contributed by its positive
and healthy culture the report states that relatives of the patient feel that service users are safe
and secure when they are receiving service at Slade House.
This report further mentioned that regarding safety of the users and people Slade House has clear
system in the place (Bibby, 2017). Staff at the Slade House is given particular training to identify
if user are at any risk from abuse or harm.
This states and clarifies that overall environment of Slade House promotes positive and
healthy work environment and people are also made to feel positive and happy at Slade House
because of caring culture of Slade House.
This states that some of the points because of which health and service policies of Slade House
are effective;
 Offering training to identify accurate and right requirement of the user
 Security while providing service
 Protected work place
 Cooperative environment
 Safe surroundings for patients and users
 Caring and positive work environment

Evaluation of health and safety needs for Staff, Service users
There are several reasons because of which health and safety for the staff, service users
and other people who come to care centre are important. Regarding this need firstly it is needed
because it is a legal requirement.
Legal Requirement- This is very important to maintain health and safety measures in the
workplace because it is a legal requirement. Legal requirement make it necessary that
organisation follows health and safety provision (Nwankwo, Karanja and Vasanthakaalam,
2017). This is legal requirement because health and safety is concerned with physical and mental
well-being of the individual. In case health and safety measures are not followed this may affect
the well being of an individual in case any accident happens. Legal regulations are me3datory to
be followed in case Slade House wants to avoid any kind of legal trouble.
Health and safety of staff is very important as they are important for delivering health and care at
Slade House and if they are not healthy and safe this may affect users of the service.
Users of the service are at Slade House to improve their health and health and safety is important
to ensure avoidance of harm that users can have at the workplace (Anyfantis, Boustras and
Karageorgiou, 2018).
This is very important and along with legal it is ethical duty that every individual who comes to
visit the care centre is safe and healthy and this requires that Slade House maintain their health
and safety in organisation.
Well being of all concerned people is not just and legal requirement but an ethical
requirement as well and this is why it is important that Slade House maintain health and safety.
This will avoid all legal troubles and along with that will build a positive image of Slade House.
At Slade house I was responsible for taking care of care users and being at this
responsibility I was an active part and managing and maintaining health and safety at Slade
House. This is because I was directly responsible for taking care of patients and care users. In my
practice as a care giver I always followed rules and regulations concerned with health and safety
of the patients and for me as well. I always placed health and safety needs at centre of my
practice mainly because I was given instructions and was told to do so while I was in my training

at Slade House. This made me ensure that I take complete care of health and safety of the
patients and care users I was also aware of Connor case and this increased my awareness and I
always kept health and safety at priority.
Some of challenges which I faced during my practice were that most of patients at Slade
House were with learning disabilities and some of them were mentally challenged and this
required me to be more careful about those people. Along with this one more challenge in doing
so was that such patients were constantly reminded about what they should not do in order to
remain safe.
Activity 2
LO2 Ways in which Health and Safety impact customers and the work of practitioners in the
health and social care workplace
Assessment of Risk
On the basis of case of Connor Sparrowhawk he was epileptic and had autistic traits and
was being taken care at Slade House, he was found dead after being submerged in his bath. This
was a serious and critical incident which happed at Slade House.
In case of Connor Sparrowhawk if the risk is assessed is basis of its probability and impact then
probability and risk both are high. This states that risk in this case was critical.
Information from risk assessment informs care planning for individual and organisational
decision making about policies and procedure
This information regarding risk informs that care planning needs to improve its policies
and procedure. This is because it is clear case of negligence and reflects that procedure at the
Slade House was improper (Healy, 2016). This case happened with an individual with autistic
traits and who was epileptic. Epileptic means person who can have sudden episodes of sensory
disturbance, loss of consciousness. This happened with Connor Sparrowhawk negligence in this
is that he was left to his own while he was bathing and there was no one around to look at him
till he found dead. The risk and occurrence of such event was highly probable regarding Connor
Sparrowhawk and possible results of the event was also very critical. The situation could have

been different for Connor Sparrowhawk if any worker was around the place while Connor
Sparrowhawk was in bath.
On the basis of this information it can be said there are requirement of care planning for
individual and organisational decision making regarding policies and procedures. On the basis of
this event Slade House needs to change care policies and procedure according to individual need
(Rosenthal, Jeon and Crowley, 2016). On the basis of this it can be changed that policies and
procedure of the Slade House will be based on individual requirement of the care.
In case any other individual comes for care at Slade House then they can treat them according to
their requirement (Chapman, Lacey and Jervis, 2018). This means that patients and service users
like Connor Sparrowhawk requires special attention and specially during procedures which has
risk.
Impact of the risk assessment policy and practice in place at Slade House on Connor and
his family
Risk assessment policy at Slade House was not effective and was the reason behind death
of Connor and this is why Connor died and his family lost their family member. This was the
worst impact on the family of Connor and Connor himself. This was the impact that by any
possible means cannot be removed and repaired. There are several elements which are covered in
risk assessment and policies for risk assessment. This elements get increased in case of health
and social care this is because such places contains several measures which can affects health of
people in care centre. The incidence because which Connor died has high probabilities because
of Connor’s condition and this is why Slade House required to took all the measures for risk
assessment. This was the result of failure of risk assessment policies and procedure which
resulted in death of Connor. Slade House as takes care of patients with learning disabilities and
those are mentally challenged requires that they are closely looked after in order to ensure their
health and more importantly their safety. Because such people can harm their safety without their
knowledge if they are not taken care closely and this is also an important element which should
be covered in risk assessment.

Dilemmas encountered in relation to implementing systems and policies for health, safety
and security may be addressed
There are various dilemmas that can be encountered by Slade House while implementing
system and policies for health, safety and security. Because along with system and policies for
health, safety and security there are various other elements which are concerned with Slade
House which are required to be considered by it (Yang, 2019).
Alignment with organisational values- This is dilemma that in case system and policies for
health, safety and security are implemented in the Slade House but they are creating difficulty in
alignment with own values of the Slade House (Roth and Reichert, 2019). The difficulty occurs
when Slade House takes measure for safety and security but these affect measures and values of
Slade House regarding safeguarding privacy of the users. This is a critical situation as Slade
House needs to keep the privacy but at the same time it requires to install camera concerned with
security.
Internal organisational conflicts- This is also possible that any measure which is taken for
health, safety and security which is required to be taken as mandatory action but stakeholders are
not convinced with that the reason can be increased cost associated.
Some of the likely dilemma related to Connor’s care at Slade House can be;
 Shortage of staff, this is possibility that staff member were required to take care of more
than one individual at a time and this is why they could not required and adequate time
for care of Connor (Sanner and et.al., 2018).
 Negligence regarding Health and Safety by the staff, this is another possibility that staff
was negligent regarding care of Connor.
Effect of non-compliance with health and safety legislation in a health and social care
workplace
There may be serious compliance in case Slade House does not comply with health and
safety legislation. This is because there are numerous legislation regarding health and safety and
this is why it is important that all these health and safety regulations are followed to avoid its
consequences because neither of consequence and effect is favourable for Slade House (Fermont

and et.al., 2020). Some of the effect that Slade House can face because of non-compliance to
health and safety are;
Financial Penalties- This is basic and most probable effect of non-compliance to health and
safety legislation at the workplace. Initially only notice is issued breach of these legislations can
incur fines up to £20000 and will issue provisions to endanger human lives and imprisonment.
Disqualification of health and social care organisation and damage to reputation- This is
another effect of non-compliance to health and social care organisation has its practices can be
disqualified and license issued to this can be cancelled. Reputation is another element which will
be affected by non-compliance to health and safety.
Endangering Human Lives- Regardless of any other legal and regulatory effect this is one of
the most important effect and most critical as well because non-compliance to health and safety
legislation means endangering human lives. This is not just against regulations and legislations
but is also unethical. This was also the impact which was faced by Connor and his family
(Walters and et.al., 2017). Non-compliance to Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous
Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) ended the life of Connor and his family has to face and deal
with all the outcomes. Human life is most important that because of any measure which cannot
be brought back.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of above discussion it can be concludes that health and safety at the health
and social care is very important. This becomes more important than any other organisation
because users of the service are more likely to get affected by non-compliance of health and
safety. Risk assessment for maintaining health and safety by care centre is also important. One
such case was discussed on report where individual died because on negligence and non-
compliance of the health and safety regulations.
This incidence involves that more than non-compliance with health and safety negligence
was responsible for death of individual in care house. This is why it can be recommended that
individuals at care centres are required to be trained in such manner that they fulfil their duties

with care and diligence and special attention should be provided when risk is high regarding
individual service user.

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