Principles for Implementing Duty of Care in Health, Social Care or Children’s and Young People’s Settings

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

Any individual who comes into contact with children in their daily line of work “has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children”.

Children Act 2006 – Is an Act that defines the new duties imposed on the Local Authorities in respect to improving the Every Child Matters outcomes for pre-school children. The Act also defines new rules in relation to childcare for working parents as well as parental information services. It is aimed at improving the well-being of young children. It emphasises the importance of safeguarding children and young people within an educational setting. If a child discloses neglect or abuse; an establishment should have instructions to help the child. This could be referral to an outside organisation or internally.

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.

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

The Staying Safe action plan recognises a number of important aspects in the wider view of safeguarding including:

It is important to ensure children and young people are protected from harm within the setting, as the parents are leaving their children in your care with the expectation that they can trust you and your colleagues to keep their children from harm. It is difficult for parents to leave their children in an education or care setting and then go to work; they need to be confident that their children will be in safe supportive hands with people that will help them develop.

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

Within my job I have a duty of care towards all of the children and young people. This is a requirement to exercise reasonable care, attention and caution to avoid negligence which would lead to the harm of others. I have to make sure that I keep these children and young people safe at all times giving extra attention towards the younger more venerable children and ensure they are safe throughout. We protect them not only from physical harm but also emotional and sexual harm. It is guarding the rights of a child as they have the right to independence and be treated with respect and dignity. This extends to respecting the rights, cultural beliefs and values of the parents and family.

Risk assessments should be carried out regularly to make sure that there are no safe guard threats towards the children in the setting. Childcare settings need risk assessing for example is there entrances and exits to the building that an unauthorised person could use? Could a child leave the setting without anyone noticing? Could a child get seriously hurt due to a broken piece of equipment?

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

* Play is at the heart of the EYFS, children need to play in order to have fun and in order to begin to understand the world around them

1.1 Explain what is means to have a duty of care in own work role

Working together to safeguard children 2006 sets out how organisations and individuals should work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people in accordance with the Children’s Act 1989 and the Children’s Act 2004. It is important that all practitioners within settings and environments looking and caring after children and young people must know their responsibilities and duties in order to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people, following their legislations, policies and procedures.

Wikipedia describes “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 foreseeably harm others”. I understand that a Duty of Care within my work role requires many things. Firstly, the children are placed into the environment by parents who want the best for their children. They expect they staff to have a degree of knowledge and understanding including education and training, to enable them to look after their children to the best of