Employee attitudes represent the greatest challenge for implementing health and safety policies

Social care professionals have rated employee attitudes as the highest difficulty faced when implementing health and safety policies within the care environment.

According to research conducted by the National Association for Safety and Health in Care Services (NASHiCS), over a fifth of the 300 social care professionals polled claimed employee attitudes were the greatest difficulty they faced, compared to 10 per cent highlighting operational and practice, and only five per cent ranking staff skills and training as a major challenge.

National chairman of NASHiCS Chris Jackson said: “This research suggests some interesting but worrying trends. First, that employee attitude problems rate so high in comparison with possibly more obviously ‘fixable’ problems such as operational processes and skills training. This suggests possible weaknesses in both recruitment processes and people management, and a need for further questioning of the efficiency of these systems.”

At 85 per cent, the majority felt that the impact of negative publicity surrounding the care services sector was either ‘challenging’ or ‘significantly challenging’ and eight per cent of professionals found health and safety policy confusing, which Mr Jackson described as a worrying trend, saying: “This is a concern given the emphasis that the Health and Safety executive has recently put into providing guidance.”

A third of professionals reported that resources devoted to health and safety are being reduced.

When asked what tops the list of health and safety concerns, 67 per cent of social work professionals ranked fire safety highest, with medication errors, challenging behaviour, legionella and scalding following, with the nutrition of service users coming last on the list of concerns, with only 2.4 per cent.

Mr Jackson suggested that the low ranking of the nutrition of service users indicates a need for greater understanding about the way in which nutrition impacts on the well-being health and safety of often vulnerable people in care.

Mr Jackson continued: “There appears to be an information gap in many organisations, where senior management are not receiving appropriate front-line reports regarding health and safety incidents. Not only that, but a further finding is that less than a fifth of CEOs/directors are involved in back to the floor visits, again suggesting that they may be lacking knowledge of the ‘real’ situation and are relying on reports which are short of important details.

“Respondent comments supporting the ranking of fire safety as their top concern indicate that this is a major area of confusion.”

The issues are due to be discussed at the NASHiCS Learning and Development Forum in June, where sessions will tackle fire safety, emotional intelligence, malnutrition and standards, for care employees.

Additionally there will be a presentation from Margaret Flynn, serious case review chair of the Winterbourne View Castlebeck investigation, who will be providing insights into the broader spectrum of health and safety issues.