I love Headway and what they have done for me but I do find the health and safety rules are a massive pain in the backside at times.
As some people may already know, I am a service user mentor at my Headway. I am not only a service user who has sustained a brain injury but am a volunteer and do the best to my ability to help Headway out.
So on Friday mornings, I make the drinks for the rest of the group. Aside from just making drinks I do help set up and pack away the ingredients for drink-making.
The only problem for me is my balance so I can make the drinks but someone else, another volunteer, will have to transfer the drinks.
Earlier this year, another service user mentor, and friend, started helping me out. We work as a team, I make drinks and he dishes them out. It is much more quick and efficient now.
But this is where health and safety gets in the way. If I am low on tea, I would want the other mentor to fill the tea urn back up but because of health and safety he is not allowed which I think, and he thinks, is dumb.
I think he lives alone, or with a partner, I'm not sure but the point is, he has a house, he has his own kitchen, he makes his own tea or coffee and has no trouble. But at Headway he isn't allowed.
Also, our main Headway offices are set in a leisure centre and to get to the offices we have to go through a couple of corridors to get there. Now if you enter a Headway session and then decide you need the toilet, you have to go down the corridor to get there but a volunteer or staff from Headway has got be there with you, which I think is odd.
I know it's all down to 'If this person tripped and hurt themselves on the way to the toilet, Headway could get in trouble' BUT what if a person finishes there session at Headway but on the way out they decide to stop off at the toilet. There is no one else with them. They are isolated. What if they had a problem then? It most probably wouldn't be Headway's fault then cos that person isn't amongst Headway's time.
So time makes a difference?
Another thing I will add. Some of you know that I am an artist.
Around 2010 or 11, I had an idea where I could draw cards and give my original copies of the cards to Headway to sell in their charity shops.
I was told that the idea was a good one and after a bit of too-ing and fro-ing I was told that I would have to print the pictures because of health and safety.
I told this to my family and we said the same thing, "People are not going to eat the cards!".
Take care all of you and merry christmas :),
MJ
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Matt2584
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You make it sound like I am selling a pack of cards haha.
Well back when I had the idea to draw cards, my art was really good but the stuff I upload now is much, much better and probably not worthy of selling a pack at a charity shop for a few quid.
My art has improved greatly and as well as the health and safety issue, I have knocked the idea on the head now.
Last week I sold one of my drawings that I had framed to one of my aunties friend/coworker for £20 :).
The health and safety madness seems to affect everything outside of our homes these days. I know there is some craziness that affects what my sons school can do and they do things. Guess it's because we've become a society that likes to sue. Don't think it will be Headway that is creating these ripples it's what, as an organisation they are obligated to follow.
That is bit curious, brain injury is such a broad church, at my local headway we don't get escorted to and from the toilets! Or stopped from making a cup of tea.
And there are plenty of wobbly, vulnerable folks.
That sounds is policy that branch of headway have, rather than having to due to health and safety laws.
Well what it is, is one mentor (me) makes the drinks and if I run low on tea, I would ask the 2nd mentor to refill it but he tells me he can't go in the kitchen because of health and safety.
And some members can walk off to the toilets ok, ones that are clearly ok on their feet.
ah some places do have rules about who can go in the kitchen again these are not law but policy.
My local group again some have balance problems and some are ok, but even the ok ones like myself, if i'm tired and light is low and say there is ramp carpeted over, I could fall, I normally just wobble and curse. but falling is a risk.
I and others don't get escorted to the toilet etc.
Well like I said before, our main Headway offices are in Portsmouth and the drop-in/outreach centre that I volunteer at is in Gosport, the town next to Portsmouth.
There is a club in Gosport that Headway rent out on a Friday morning for their service users to use.
Ever since I had been made mentor in 2009, I have been using the kitchen. Even today I can still access the kitchen as I always have done but this 2nd mentor who hasn't been there as long as me is not allowed to use the kitchen because of health and safety reasons.
It is a bit silly and over the top and he also gets annoyed about it.
But anyway, I suppose it is just best to leave it alone, let Headway make this strange decision and let a volunteer use the kitchen instead :).
Sounds to me like they are making individual decisions based on some form of risk assessment - which is fine and to be recommended, although given the environment and the organisation I would suggest that (a) if this is what is happening there should be a written policy against which such risks are assessed; (b) those individual assessments should be also written to show they are in line with the policy, they should also be regularly reviewed and open to inspection and, where necessary, challenge; (c) in the case of legally capable adults they should be drawn up by discussion not by dictat.
It sounds like they have an idea that there is a 'health and safety' type issue here but haven't grasped the full enormity of what acknowleging that flag actually means/entails, and as a result are making some inconsistent or irregular decisions. Trouble is I bet they don't have the resources to deal with it all in the way that these things end up having to be dealt with these days, so to raise it is more likely to result in a blanket ban of all service users (whether mentors or not, whether fine in the kitchen or not) from the kitchen, as that policy is on the face of it easier to implement, monitor and defend.
At least it is until someone challenges it as discrimination or a breach of their human rights ....😂
Now I remember why I was so glad to leave an administrative bureaucracy! The world has gone quite, quite mad😮
Just been reading through this thread as the title caught my eye, not literally as that would be a breach of health and safety... Sorry couldn't resist. I know a little about health and safety as I run a pretty successful building company with many subcontractors and the health and safety (H & S) laws completely changed from the 1st April this year. What has happened is the commercial world of building has merged with the domestic side. It was always there but its now got stricter and more stringent. For me that meant change, (he screams in anxiety) I hate change. I had to speak to a H&S guru which I did through my ground works contractor and got every thing in place with a format that could be tailored to each individual project, weather the project is £2k or £502k its the same procedure.
I can understand completely that the policy for your headway meeting might state that only the designated person can fill the tea urn up and to have 2 people on this operation would mean more money on the policy as the risk then doubles. Its crazy I know but ill give you an example of how mad this is in the building world. We have to ware hard hats in certain situations if your on the scaffold and up high as someone may drop some thing it it hit you on the head, yep can understand this but the roofers have to ware hard hats...???? theres nothing above them! but they still have to ware them and I suppose when they leave the roof and are coming down the scaffold they are in danger then of being hit on the head so hard hats on. Again its policy. I was talking about this to a health and safety advisor in the site office a few weeks back and no hard hats are needed in the site office, he bent down to pick his hat up off the floor and cracked his head on the desk, yes I couldn't stop laughing and now have a sign on the office door stating hard hats must be worn in here... Sorry rambling on.
Unfortunately we are getting like the USA where theres a blame theres a claim and insurance companies are tightening up their act but it doesn't make it easer if all you want to do is sort some tea out. Its more than likely a hot water issue too scolding hot water being carried about they don't like. Common sense used to play a big part but it seems now we can't be trusted with that and places have to be put in place to cover us (them) which is what I have to do all the time. I now have to think for the insurance company that I pay to cover me in my work... yep the world has gone completely mad but if one of the mad people decide to cause a problem you can guarantee the insurance companies will be covered. Read the small print.
Maybe the roofers have to wear hard hats so that when they are walking about on the roof, they could trip (on a tile or something) and and fall head first off of the building.
I couldn't quite imagine a scenario like that to happen much, but you know... health and safety :).
Yep knowing how roofers are they could fall over a nail. No its so crazy all my lads are very good and its just common sense really. If you see some thing that could be dangerous sort it than and now don't leave it. We are very good but I know others who are not.
Hi Matt, following on from what Nick wrote regarding building sites but also with your own H&S post, don't forget insurance will be involved, especially Public Liability - in both cases, and that why visitors to building sites have to go through often closed or pulled to gates and then don a Hard Hat before proceeding further - Risk Assessment conducted in the different uses of a place and its users!
I think the same probably applies to Public Liabilty Ins, in the places your groups meet, especially as it involves people with all or some of the various effects of a BI, again depending on who or how their responsibilities are defined in terms of the organizers present, this is where the individual risk assessments would also come in.
It only takes one accident to happen anywhere for the consequences to be far reaching for everyone involved. So it's not discrimination, perhaps also even in the recent case of the BI girl in the pub - those responsible anywhere have to assess a situation and act accordingly, providing they have the knowledge and the right training to do so.
Risk Assessment and our PL Jnsurance was one of the things I was responsible for reading up on to advise my boss accordingly when I was the Local Community Centre Office Administrator for 3 years just before leaving the UK.
It was my boss, who was a pain, because he was 20 years older than me and thought it was all a load of rubbish. I'm like pleased to say though, that necessary changes were put into place eventually, purely for the sake of the Health and Safety of the users and staff - not just because of EU/UK rules and regs!
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