Case Study 3: CHLTAID012

Case Study Assessment 3: CHLTAID012 Participate in Work Health and Safety

Work Health and Safety Legislation underpins a quality learning environment. You cannot have a high quality early childhood service if your work health and safety practices jeopardise the safety, health and wellbeing of staff, children, families and service visitors. (PSC National Alliance, 2012, p. 10)

Scenario

Leonora (in her role as HSR) supports staff understanding of their responsibilities in regard to ensuring that legislated WHS practices are implemented correctly. Aside from encouraging open discussions about incident reports and WHS concerns during weekly staff meetings, Leonora is in the process of establishing more extensive evaluations of WHS practices by introducing quarterly reviews of near misses and current incident reports. Her aim is to make these presentations interesting with the use of visual techniques such as PowerPoint presentations incorporating WHS terminology and short snippets of relevant WHS theory, and also spreadsheets that show differences in WHS results achieved during the previous quarter. She also aims to make the presentations interactive with the use of open-ended questioning, case study and role-play scenarios, quizzes and the development of mind maps, where applicable. She has developed these more effective communication methods over time, progressing from simply posting WHS information on notice boards, to presenting a list of facts, distributing handouts at staff meetings and sending out occasional surveys.

Leonora is always available to assist staff to complete the necessary workplace forms, whereas previously she would have noted staff comments and completed the forms herself. She believed at the time that it was better to have total consistency in the ways the forms were completed. She now realises that it is more important that staff have the experience of completing the forms, as this leads to a greater understanding of WHS issues, including hazard identification and risk controls.

Leonora has her own forms of reporting to the service’s PCBU. One of the expectations that aligns with this reporting is ensuring that the work team is encouraged to participate in consultative activities and to contribute to WHS. She believes that fostering staff input encourages reflective and safe workplace practices, duty of care and staff ownership of the processes and, therefore, their commitment.

Leonora has found that some staff struggle most with understanding the terminology used in the legislative documents and is planning to focus on presenting relevant aspects to staff in a Plain English format with links to the application of these aspects in everyday practices.

For example, several of Safe Work Australia’s model codes of practice link to everyday good housekeeping practices. Another focus area is the need to understand the process for managing risks in the preparations for and during excursions. The initial step is to critically reflect on staff feedback based on previous excursions and to use it to improve health and safety policies and procedures.

Reflect on the following tasks in your Logbook.

Reference

Walker, L. The Early Childhood Educator for Diploma, Walker L. et al. McGraw-Hill Education Community Services 3rd Edition  Chapter 5

PSC National Alliance, Work Health and Safety in Education and Care Services, 2012, https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/ default/files/2021-01/ManagingEmergencySituationsInEducationAndCareServices.PDF

References

Davis, J. D., 2010, Young Children and Environment: Early Education for Sustainability, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Garvis, S. and Pendergast, D., 2017, Health & Wellbeing in Childhood, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.