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Posted By MetalMan
I have been asked by a co worker to raise this question on this board. His wife works for the Fire and Rescue service and is an administration worker in one of the stations. As part of the big push that is on at the moment to carry out home fire safety visits more and more non forefighting staff are being asked to carry out these visits. While I am not aware of the precise details of the visits I am aware that these can be booked over the phone with the fire and rescue service. The person nominated then visits the person at home to carry out these visits.
The concerns my co worker has are that there does not seem to be any systems in place for ensuring the safety of the staff who go out, many of who are women. There is no system to check whether the person requesting the visit is a genuine person or otherwise, there is no system of calling in on arrival or calling in on completion of the visit at all. There is no set time for the visit so no way for the main office to know when a preson is overdue, there also does not seem to be any contingency plan that in the event of a person carrying out one of these visits not returning to the main office, or going missing.
My co worker did ask me whether I thought he was over reacting, I thought for a minute and came to the conclusion that I would not want my wife walking into a total strangers house with no knowledge of who they were, how many people where in the house etc. To sum it up I said to him "If your wife was walking down a street and somebody she did not know opened their front door and asked her to come in, would you consider it safe for her to do so?"
I have serious concerns about this! can anyone help?
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Posted By mrs.seed
sounds like a classic 'lone working' situation. You have come up with several control measures yourself; appointments, managers knowing where staff are, staff checking in after certain time periods, emergency response if employee goes AWOL.
The HSE has free leaflets which may help:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/violindx.htm
sarah
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Posted By Crim
Hi MetalMan, email sent- hope it helps.
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Posted By jackw.
Hi/ LA here. Obvious duty of care issue. Sending staff into the community completely blind is asking for trouble.. and you won't have any defence, mitigating circumstances etc. re any incident, claim etc. Put your email address on and i will send you copies of our policy, guidance and risk assessment paperwork for lone working.
Cheers.
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Posted By TBC
Agree with all above cover your bases and put in safe practices.
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Posted By martin gray1
Metalman
Don't blame you for having concerns unbelievable. Some good advise given.
MG
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Posted By MetalMan
Thanks all for the replies so far.
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Posted By Tabs
Contact the Suzie Lamplugh Trust for more practical help.
It is astonishing that a public safety initiative is not taking the most basic precautions for its own staff.
This should be raised at very high levels within the brigade.
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Posted By MetalMan
Thanks Tabs, hopefully I can give this guy enough information for him to be able to raise the issue with someone in charge.
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Posted By Jan Comer
Lone worker protection would provide both peace of mind and the knowledge that someone is at the end of the line 24/7 to locate them and get them the help they need in an emergency. It's easy to set up on any mobile phone, or if required on a specialist device. One of the leading suppliers in the UK is 24/7 response centre Orbis Monitoring - www.omsl.net
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Posted By MetalMan
Thanks I'll take a look.
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