26th September 2018 Preventing work-related stress in schools

Stress affects us all at different times and in different ways. In the last 12 months, over half a million working days were lost in one section of education due to stress, depression or anxiety, which was caused or made worse by work.

Did you know employers have a legal duty to protect employees from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it?  By tackling stress we can prevent ill health that will bring some obvious  business benefits.

Often just talking about issues openly and honestly can help prevent problems or stop them getting worse. HSE’s ‘Talking Toolkit’ for schools can be used as a framework to help line managers, heads of department, heads of area or supervisors, to have simple, practical conversations with school employees.

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25th May 2018 HSE updates

Don’t ignore the Law – HSE Approved Law Poster

The Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations 1989 requires employers to either display the HSE approved law poster or to provide each of their workers with the equivalent leaflet……..See link below

Updated First Aid at Work Guidance

HSE’s First Aid at Work Guidance documents have been recently updated…..See link below

HSE urges employers to ‘think again’ before investing in ‘off-the-shelf’ manual handling training

Off-the-shelf manual handling training should become a thing of the past…..See link below

HSE updates

4th May 2018 First Aid in schools

There appears to be some confusion over the first aid training requirements in schools. This can lead to mis-information and poor or inadequate training being carried out. To try and combat this we are highlighting a series of key documents and sources of information and remind all our members of the need to be diligent when selecting providers and assessing the levels of training for their school.

The first aid training consultant we spoke with said “It is recommended by the LEA, HSE and DFE that schools must provide where applicable adequate first aid to cover

  1. All of the pupils of the school (paediatric)
  2. Staff (first aid at work) and
  3. Visitors (first aid at work + paediatric).

An interesting point is covered in section 52 (see below) that not all courses cover paediatric unless tailored for by the trainer as we do. So, a 1-day EFAW course will not cover first aid for children in any way, as a paediatric course will not cover adult CPR in any way, therefore it is always advised to have a mixed skill set of first aid trained staff.”

For further information use the following link:

Paediatric and other FA requirements in schools

 

18th July 2017 CDM Regs for simple maintenance

Construction Design Management Regulations tools

I have used an approved app) to produce some information for indoors general decorating/maintenance and outside general decorating/maintenance which took approximately 5 minutes each to complete. The action plans that are produced as a result can be shared on email as a PDF and are a useful way to show how some simple considerations can protect all involved in and around any such works.

You should make use of this resource to show how you are considering the risks associated with this type of work, which is generally carried out by your site team and others.

Members can see the results in the following link as well as have access to the app.