In this topic we will discuss and look at the skills and knowledge required for a worker to participate in safe work practices to ensure their own health and safety, and that of others in work environments that involve caring directly for clients. It has a focus on maintaining safety of the worker, the people being supported and other community members. We will look at required skills and knowledge of workplace health and safety (WHS) to carry out work, in both centre-based and home-based service provision applied in accordance with Commonwealth and State/Territory legislation, Australian/New Zealand standards and industry codes of practice.
By the end of this topic, you will understand:
- State and territory workplace health and safety legislation
- Sources of information about workplace health and safety including policies
- Workplace regulations, codes of practice and industry standards relating to safety
- State and territory WHS authorities
- The WHS rights and responsibilities of employers and workers
Legal framework means a broad system of rules that governs and regulates decision-making, agreements, laws, etc. Service providers, as set by industry standards, have legal and ethical responsibilities towards their clients. This is to ensure that clients consistently receive high quality and safe support services. This means that both employers and individual support workers must fulfil legal and ethical responsibilities by following safe work practices and as guided by legislation.
A safe workplace is everyone’s right. Workers and employers alike have a role to play ensuring a workplace is safe. However, employers and workers have quite different responsibilities under the law when it comes to safety.
The responsibilities of employers include:
- Providing safety equipment (such as PPE) and instruction in its use
- Making sure that the workplace is safe
- Providing training in manual handling and other safety issues
- Acting on incident reports or near-misses.
Responsibilities of workers include following all reasonable instructions, reporting unsafe situations or practices, and taking reasonable care not to do anything which could put others at risk of harm. For example:
- It is highly unethical to abuse and neglect people, and there are laws created against this( eg mandatory reporting for suspected cases of abuse and negligence).
Health and safety are the concerns of every person who enters a workplace. Legislation outlines the roles and responsibilities of every Australian employer and worker to protect yourself and others from harm. In the community services workplace, this includes the safety of clients or residents, family members, visitors and volunteers. These laws are made and enforced by different levels of government.
Here are some examples
- The Commonwealth (Australian Government) National work health and safety laws, such as the Workplace Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cwth)
- State and territory governments, State and territory legislation and regulations regarding workplace safety, such as codes of practice
- Local councils and shires Local council bylaws, such as building codes and food safety
- Legal Frameworks for Health and Safety Work Health and Safety Legislation
Until 2012, each Australian state and territory had its own act of legislation relating to work health and safety, which could lead to confusion. The National Workplace Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cwth) (the WHS Act), along with WHS regulations and codes of practice, is referred to as the Model WHS laws. The WHS Act is in place in all states and territories except Victoria and Western Australia. In Victoria, the legislation is called the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2001.
In Western Australia, the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1984 provides health and safety legislation. This is likely to change in the future, with WA closer to adopting the Model WHS laws than Victoria.
To help you identify the current WHS legislation covering your project, the table below lists the WHS Act and WHS Regulation of the states and territories of Australia and their respective regulatory body for work health and safety.
The regulations provide guidance around many aspects of working safely, for example around the duty of identifying hazards (Regulation 34), hierarchy of control measures (Regulation 36), duty to provide first aid (Regulation 42), managing risk of hearing loss from noises (Regulation 57), emergency procedures (Regulation 74) in the following state regulations:
- Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (ACT)
- Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (NSW)
- Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation) Regulations 2011 (NT)
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (QLD)
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2012 (SA)
- Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022 (WA)
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2012 (TAS) Safe Work Australia provides national information about safety in the workplace and links to the laws and authorities in each state and territory.
Safe Work Australia provides national information about safety in the workplace and links to the laws and authorities in each state and territory.
Codes of Practice
Codes of practice are generally developed and published by government agencies and authorities such as Safe Work Australia. A code of practice is a booklet or resource written in plain English, and with examples, designed to help you understand an act of legislation. They are often written for particular industries so that the legislation makes sense for the types of tasks you do. In recent years many codes of practice have been replaced with guidance materials. You can find examples of codes of practice on the Safe Work website: ‘Guidance Materials’ website.
State and Territory Health and Safety Authorities
Each jurisdiction in Australia continues to hold its own health and safety authority. The role of these bodies is to:
- Investigate serious workplace accidents
- Visit workplaces to ensure compliance with legislation
- Provide information, education and advice to workplaces about health and safety
- Administer workers compensation schemes.
Here are the health and safety authorities in each state and territory:
Community service organisations are responsible for maintaining legislation relating to the health and safety issues that are unique to their own industry, contained in various pieces of legislation. For example:
- Family Violence Act 2011
- Family Law Act 1975
- Social Security Act 1991
- Migration Act 1958
- Aged Care Act 1997 (Cth)
- Home and Community Care Act 1985 (Cth)
- Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)
- Disability Services Act 1986 (Cth)
- Age Discrimination Act 2004 (Cth)
- Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth)
- Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth)
- Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)
- Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (Cth)
- Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)
- Work Health and Safety Act 2011
A standard is written by your industry or sector. In the community service sector, there are various standards and regulations such as:
- Mental health legislation
- Work health and safety (WHS)
- Pharmaceutical benefits
- Poisons and therapeutics
- Privacy legislation
- Public health
- Registration and practice of health professionals
- Residential and community services
- Child protection and guardianship
- Discrimination and harassment
- Equal employment opportunities
Duty of care means acting reasonably to protect others from harm, and to take all reasonable precautions to keep others safe. This includes responding to situations in a way that a reasonable person would be expected to act, given your job role, training and information that you can see or have been given. You have a duty of care to:
- Follow all policies and procedures
- Help contribute to a safe working environment
- Protect yourself and others from injury wherever possible
- Take reasonable precautions to prevent harm, injury or abuse
- Record and report all accidents and incidents
- Report any problems or concerns.
Watch
This video refers to the Fundamentals of Community Services about duty of care
A policy is a line of action adopted from other considerations such as government legislation to guide and determine present and future decisions.
A procedure prescribes actions that need to be executed as a sequence of activities, tasks, steps and processes to produce a desired result or outcome.
Your workplace will have its own unique set of policies and procedures. These will have many similarities to the policies of other workplaces because policies must be based on different types of legislation and industry requirements, including those outlined above.
Policies are generally written by a committee of staff members. They must be easily available to staff, easy to follow and provide you with enough help for you to follow the law. Along with understanding your own role in relation to health and safety policies, everyone in the workplace has a part in helping others, including clients, families, contractors, visitors and other workers to access and understand them. You must model the behaviours and procedures that are expected in the service policies. It is also your responsibility to monitor the safe behaviour of others, including other staff, clients and families, and take steps to ensure that breaches in policies are reported.
Policy documents can include:
- Smoking in the workplace
- Dress standards
- Privacy and confidentiality
- Record keeping and information management
- Conflicts of Interest
- Staff induction
- Emergency procedures
- Incidents/accident reporting
- Confidentiality
- Information Technology
- Deaths
- Risk management
- EEO
- Duty of Care
- Complaints
- Sexual harassment and
- bullying
- Medication management
- Transporting clients
- Staff development and training
- Supervision
- WHS
- Manual handling
- Petty cash/reimbursement
Accessing Policies
It is crucial that all staff, volunteers and contractors can access policies and procedures readily. Many policies that relate to clients, residents or families should also be provided or easily accessible to them.Depending on the service, health and safety policies might be found:
- In folders in your service’s office
- On the organisation’s intranet
- In booklet form and distributed to staff and clients or their families
- On posters or notices on walls to remind staff and others, including clients, of a particular policy, such as washing hands or wearing PPE.
If your service maintains its policies and procedures on an intranet platform, it is helpful to have a hard copy readily available on site as well, as long as it is updated whenever changes are made to the digital version.
Policy Breaches
Not knowing about a policy is never an acceptable excuse for breaching it. Your service must make the policy easy to read and access, but it is your responsibility to read and understand it. If you work outside of policy, your actions can lead to risks to the health and safety of others. It can also mean that your workplace can refuse to support you if claims for negligence, injury or harm are taken against you.
Responsibilities of Employers
Employers must ensure that the health and safety of all people, including clients, volunteers and visitors is not placed at unnecessary risk. Employers and business owners must maintain all buildings and equipment so that you can perform your own role safely, and to maximise safety to the people you support. They must supply equipment according to law, such as gloves and other infection control items, machines to help you to transfer people where needed, and other safety items.
Your employer must make indoor and outdoor areas secure and as free as possible from hazards that are known to cause injury. Employers must provide training and information that helps you to perform your job safely. Some of this training, such as manual handling and infection control training, is compulsory according to law. However, you must also be able to ask for help and information for other parts of your role, including the use of new equipment. Employers and managers must also report certain types of incidents to the state or territory safety authority.
Responsibilities of Employees
You must by law take reasonable care of yourself and others at all times. You must also co-operate with your managers and employer by following policies and attending training.
The section that outlines the scope of the policy usually provides information about who is responsible for the requirements of the policy. If you are unsure about the scope of your responsibilities, it is likely that the policy needs updating to make this clearer to you and others. It is far better to seek help with understanding your own role in acting on a policy before you need to respond to a real situation.
In most cases, it is not acceptable to simply leave a health and safety issue to someone else. If you see a hazard, deal with it immediately. If possible, remove the hazard, such as by cleaning a spill, or placing a broken piece of equipment in a locked area to be fixed by maintenance workers.
One of your most important responsibilities is to report and document the problem to a manager or appropriate senior person. Reporting and documentation procedures might vary between services and depend on the level of risk. Reporting can mean verbally reporting to a manager, a senior manager, a maintenance officer or even emergency services such as the police or ambulance. Documentation should include completing an incident report, or an illness or injury report.
Reflection
Sometimes it is not what you do, but what you do not do, that can lead to harm. It is every worker’s responsibility to manage and report foreseeable hazards such as a spill on the floor or a broken piece of equipment. Being too busy to manage it at the time is not an excuse. If an injury results from a hazard that you noticed and could easily have fixed, this could be considered negligence.
