Essay about Duty of Care Policy in the Australian Education System

Duty of Care: best interest; defensible decision making; contextualising behaviour; identification of positive and negative risks

There are many questions and arguments that remain about the standard of care within schools. Should the current standard of care in relation to schools be increased or remain the same or be substantially reduced? Does law of torts make a teacher’s job too difficult? Should schools always be held liable when a student is injured? ‘A tort is a “civil wrong” and for someone to commit a tort they have to interfere with another person’s rights, or fail in their legal obligations to that person, and this causes the person to suffer.’ (Drew Hopkins, 2008) An example case of civil wrong is State of Victoria v Bryar [1970] 44 ALJR 174.

Duty of care is a requirement that all health and social care professionals, and organisations providing health and care services, must put the interests of the people who use their service first. They also have to do everything in their power to keep people safe of any harm, neglect or risk. As an individual healthcare worker you owe a duty of care to your service users, your colleagues, your employer, yourself and the public interest. All duty of care is described I Code of Practice. Duty of care means that you must aim to provide high quality care to the best of your ability. If for any reason you can’t do this then you must say so. You must adhere to a standard of reasonable care and you are expected to:

The duty of care affects my own work role as its my duty of care to ensure that the service users in the organisation I care for are safe and protected from any sort of abuse. It is important that I receive training so that I am able to recognise and understand signs of abuse. It is also my responsibility and duty to record all information if an accident or incident occurs. I must protect the service users as well as respect their needs.

It is everybody’s responsibility to safeguard children – This means every single staff member within a setting; irrelevant of what role they may have there. This also includes non-staff members, such as volunteers, student’s third-party companies (visitors, service providers etc). Each setting should therefore adopt their own safeguarding policy, of which has to be kept up to date and followed at all times.

2.3 All those working in the school have a legal duty to protect the rights of children and young people. It is important that you examine your own attitudes and values critically; to consider how these may impact on the way you work with children

Ensuring children and young people’s safety and welfare in the work setting is an essential part of safeguarding. While children are at school, practitioners act in ‘loco parentis’ while their parents are away. As part of their legal and professional obligations, practitioners hold positions of trust and a duty of care to the children in their school, and therefore should always act in their best interests and ensure their safety – the welfare of the child is paramount (Children Act 1989). The Children Act 2004 came in with the Every Child Matters (ECM) guidelines and greatly impacted the way schools look at the care and welfare of pupils. Children and young people should be helped to learn and thrive and be given the opportunity to

Schools are required to have policies and procedures as they safe guard the staff and pupils and

A duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeable harm others. A definition from Wikipedia

Unit 333.3.2. Explain policies and procedures that are in place to protect children, young people and adults who work with them.

Unit 4222-304 Principles for implementing duty of care in health, social care or children’s and young people’s settings.

Principles for implementing duty of care in health, social care or children’s and young people’s settings

SHC 34 PRICIPLES FOR IMPLEMENTING DUTY OF CARE IN HEALTH, SOCIAL CARE OR CHILDRREN’S AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S SETTINGS

The duty of care is a fundamental legal principle of tort law. Tort law is central to the Canadian legal system and it provides compensation for the grieving person who was damaged by the wrongdoing of another person. For example, if a physical education teacher allows students to play on a construction site for physical education the teacher is negligent. The teacher owes her students a duty to take care of them and by allowing them to play in a construction site she breaches that duty and may be found negligent and liable for damages. Further, the school board who employees the teacher may also be liable, vicarious liability which will be explained in question Part C #7). The precedent has been set for teachers by the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Thornton et al v. Board of School Trustees (Prince George,1975) when it found that the teacher owes a higher level of care than a careful parent. Similarly, in the Myers et al v. Peel County Board of Education (1981) the court found that the teacher “owes a higher standard of care than that of a prudent parent”. Further, the Alberta Court of Queen’s bench found that the teacher was negligent when the teacher did not meet the “professional” standard of care expected of a gymnastics teacher, which according to the court was the direct cause of the student’s paralysis at the school gymnasium.

Duty of care means the scope and objective of the service of products of the business in the case of the Policlinico Hospital, its duty of care is to provide a high quality of health care services to its clientele with compliance to the present governinglaw.