Posted By Ken Taylor For those who think that risk assessment is only a health and safety tool - think again. Risks have to be assessed as part of care programme planning, child protection, finance management, etc, etc. There seems to be a continuing problem on this forum with H&S people thinking about their own particular (and probably more traditional) job rather than the much wider range of work carried out within our profession and the range of other professionals with which we may be required to work with and for.

Posted By Jez Corfield Martin, I agree with your point, and Ken you are correct in thinking risk assessment is a tool used outside H&S, but risk assessment is not a tool that is used exclusively by H&S people. There is a difference between advising on a process, and having responsibility for childcare aspects. But yes risk assessment is used outside of H&S, and H&S process needs to dovetail with other disciplines, but these other disciplines do not 'de facto' become a H&S topic because of our involvement. Jez

Posted By Pete Chidwick What about the 'W' in HSW - often forgotten. Does 'welfare' include 'safeguarding' which in turn includes 'child protection'? I'm not arguing for anything more than the point already made that we need to think more widely about risk management sometimes and recognise that there are cross over issues where we may need to liaise with others from a position of some insight, depending on the sector we work in, but not 'competency' per se.

Posted By martinw It is not under question that H&S has an input into those company policies which are involved in non-employee safety, which includes children. So do HR. But it is mainly the situation which follows the breakdown of safeguarding which is my issue(but also regarding policy and procedures). Here the person dealing with that situation should be the person(s) in these organisations designated to deal with child protection issues - due to the education, training, instruction and experience they have been given in the child protection field. Unless the designated person described above also is the H&S person, the H&S person would not in my opinion be involved. Additionally in my opinion they should not be involved in policy making in this matter unless they are competent and have some of the education, experience etc described above. I do not carry out construction RAs because I have no experience etc of construction - I do not have competence. Also, I do not have the competence to have input into child protection policies and procedures for the same reason I do not do construction RAs. I did a great deal of work into research into the new safeguarding legislation and the required organisations' changes in procedure in my last role and became the person who updated the rest of the H&S team, and the organisations which I visited to assess their competence in general learner H&S in these matters. Doesn't mean that I am competent in child protection. Means I read about it and talked about it. SNS in the second post of this thread made the point that we in H&S do not get involved in other criminal matters. Agreed. There are overlaps at times but not enough to allow H&S folks to elbow their way into something which they do not have the competence to carry out, unless they have had the training, experience etc as described above. And in the first post of this thread the point was made that the HSE do not record child protection as a hazard for their purposes. Because other organisations have the designated legal responsibility for dealing with it from first to last aspects. Again I mean no offence. Just making the point which has been examined at other times on this forum that competence is of overarching importance - the higher the risk, the higher the levels of competence required in most cases. Get this wrong and the risk is phenomenal. Martin

Posted By martinw Agreed Phil, well said.