Health Safety and Security In Health and Social Care

Describe how key legislation in relation to health, safety and security influence health and social care delivery. Health and social care settings are covered by specific legislation and laws from the government to enable the care setting is operating the optimum way. Acts like the Health and safety at work act (1974) this act applies to all workplaces and it pull all the laws together so that all organisations were covered by the same legislation. However, there are other regulations that apply to specific areas of work. These are the food safety act 1990. This act ensures that all food complies with the food safety act and its definition which includes drinks and chewing gum. There are four major offences in this act.

• Making food dangerous to health deliberately or accidentally (adding things to food)
• Selling food that does not complies with the food safety requirement being unfit for human consumption.
• Selling food that is not of the nature or quality required by the consumer.
• Falsely describing, labelling or advertising food and food products.

Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995

This act ensures all food is handled correctly, the area where food is prepared must be clean, hands must be washed, hair should be covered, separate work areas should be used to prevent cross contamination of cooked and raw food. Following this regulation is especially important in health and social care settings as service users may be vulnerable. • Reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations (RIDDOR)1995 The RIDDOR regulation applies to all places of work, but not to all work incidents need to be reported.

Incidents that need to be reported are ones that happened because of the work the people were doing. To be serious enough to be reported under RIDDOR an accident would have to result in an employee:

• dying
• injuries resulting in 3 days or more off from work
• suffering from major injuries like fractured bones (these exclude fractures to the fingers, thumbs or toes), amputation of limbs and dislocation.

Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulation (Coshh) 2002

This legislation was introduced in 2002 and covers the use and storage of chemicals.

All health and social care services have to ensure that their working environment is safe and can not harm the service users or care professionals. An example of this would be at a nursery cleaning products like bleach being left in the reach of children. • Manual handling operations regulations 1992 This act promotes safer moving and handling and appropriate use of equipment for example using lifts to help service users in an out of the bath instead of trying to live a service user by hand.

This is an important act in health and social care because it prevents injuries to service users or care employees.

Data Protection Act 1998

This act protects individual’s rights to their personal data being stored. This act covers the processing, gathering, storing and sharing of an individual’s data. This is important in health and social care settings as service users information is used daily. When sharing an individual’s personal data consent to the sharing of their data is needed.

Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999

This regulation requires employers to carry out regular risk assessments, look at changes and then re-asses the risks as necessary. This is important in health and social care settings as care organisations have a duty to minimise to their service users.

Describe how policies and procedures promote health, safety and security in a health and social care workplace. Whilst on work experience at Jubilee children centre I was informed on a number of different policies and procedures.

I was shown where the first aid box was and shown a book that I would have to write in if I injured myself this comes under (RIDDOR). The nursery officer told me that all the staff where qualified first aiders. Names of staff and children were registered in the morning as a safety precaution and also as a fire procedure. This is to ensure that all people present in the nursery can be accounted for in the event of a fire. A safety gate to the nursery had to be closed at all times and