Risk Assessments
Completing a risk assessment drastically reduces the chance of having an incident in the first place. Increasingly Leaders are being asked to undertake assessments for the work that they do with young people. At first this may appear to be a daunting prospect but, in reality, it is a simple straight-forward process. It is important that the person responsible for the activity undertakes the risk assessment with those involved, as it is the process of thinking through what might happen and the consequences should anything go wrong, then making plans to deal with the situation which increases safety. Learning to manage risks is important.
The risk assessment as a careful examination of what could cause harm to people taking part in an activity. The assessment helps you to decide whether you have taken sufficient precautions or should do more to prevent harm. Scouting recommend a simple five step approach which can be summarised as:
1 Look for hazards. 'Hazard' means anything that can cause harm. Look at all your activities, including non-routine tasks. Look at what actually happens rather than what should happen.
2 Decide who might be harmed and how. For example, there are young people, voluntary leaders, members of the public. Think about how people may be at risk - does their role involve manual handling, visiting people in their homes, working with the public?
3 For each hazard evaluate the chance, big or small, of harm actually being done and decide whether existing precautions are adequate or more should be done. For example, for each hazard consider what would be the worst result? Would it be a broken finger or someone being killed? How likely is it to happen? If you consider more needs to be done to control the risk, ask yourself if you can avoid the hazard by doing the activity in a different way. If not, you need to think about controlling the hazard more effectively. For example:
Choose the most important thing to tackle first.
Work with the participants and other leaders to solve problems and agree precautions.
Remember, even after all precautions have been taken, some risk will often remain. The important things you need to decide are whether the hazard is significant, and whether you have controlled it by satisfactory precautions so that the risk is as small as possible.
4 Record your findings of your risk assessment (e.g. the main risks and the measures you have taken to deal with them). You can keep paper or electronic records; it's up to you, but make sure the records are easily accessible. Remember that you only need to record your significant findings. These would include the hazards, existing control measures (precautions, rules, systems, training etc.) and the people who may be affected.
5 Review your assessment from time to time and revise if necessary. Remember that things change; you might visit a new area or undertake a different activity. Rules get broken and people don't always do as they've been told. The only way to find out about changes like these is by checking. Don't wait until things have gone wrong. Check that the hazards are the same and that the precautions are adequate.
You can do the risk assessment yourself. You could ask a responsible person to help you. Remember - the person in charge of the activity is responsible for seeing that the risk assessment is done and is adequate. Risk assessments should not be over complicated. In most activities the potential problems or hazards are few and can be dealt with by simple measures. Checking them is common sense, but necessary.
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