Posted By Ian Stone We are looking at our procedures on managing H&S for workplacements. The problem we have is how often and how we carry out checks on the placements. With limited staff and thousands of students on hundreds of placements how can we carry out the checks? How does other people carry out these checks and at what frequency? Also we have students placed with families, some are abroad. What checks do other people carry out on these families? We carry out CRB checks in the Uk but what about abroad? Any help would be great Ian

Posted By Ed Carter Ian, We have the same issue. I'm aware that the DofES/LSC/Association of Colleges are looking into the subject after it was brought up at one of their liaison meetings. The international placements are the most arkward. other than that we tend to carry out an initial appraisal of potential placements, if accepted they are then visited on a quarterly basis, although those in placement are obviously seen more regularly when they attend courses etc. Hope this helps Ed

Posted By Ian Stone Our College or myself have no problem in completing these checks and my request was not asking to get out of it. The checks are carried out by staff as and when they can. What I was asking was how do other people carry them out and how often. We all have to show we are looking after the H&S of the placements.

Posted By Sean Fraser Just a thought, but presuming that students are not already required to complete some form of evaluation on the placement itself (over and above any reports required to be submitted for the course), could this not be introduced and used as "evidence" to satisfactorily evaluate the placement location? Only badly performing/poorly rated organisations would be targetted for impromptu visits to determine if they are good enough to remain on the approved list. The first thing they should be doing is conducting a Health and Safety Induction of the student as if they were a new employee and if this wasn't done, their commitment to safety needs to be seriously addressed! Also, and I am making another presumption here, there will be established organisations who routinely offer placements to students, with whom a close relationship will be forged with the placement body. Is it really necessary to visit them so often, without a direct statutory requirement to do so? This would mean that resources could be focused on allowing new organisations onto the approved list by visiting them to do an evaluation of their SMS, ensuring it meets acceptable standards and then placing them on a routine safety audit review schedule - perhaps only visiting some every three years, but annualy for the higher risk environments. Maybe even random visits, with short notice, would be a condition of the agreement of placement. Routine H&S reports could be forwarded annually to the LA by all those wishing to remain on the approved list. There are a number of ways to approach this without making it an onerous chore. Note, even the HSE are unable to visit companies routinely due to lack of resources - and they are the legal enforcement body! The balance has to be the perceived risk vs. actual risk - surely the main assumption should be that reputable organisations meet the UK Health and Safety regulatory requirements already, so they don't need frequent compliance inspections! Once in a while should be OK, should it not? If we were really condoning such actions, then perhaps the LA's should consider giving out some sort of mark to approved organisations (Safe Placement Award) so they can use it in their marketing litereature to show how often they are getting inspected and endorsed!! I do not agree that LA's seek ways around legislation - often the threat of public litigation against a "faceless" governmental authority means they go into overkill in order to cover themselves. I'm not sure that I enjoy the thought of my hard-earned Council Tax being wasted on such efforts that might only bear fruit once in a while (occasionally finding a poor organisation and removing it from the approved list), when it could be more effectively used elsewhere for greater actual benefit every day. But that is a discussion for elsewhere!