Page 2663 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 August 2019
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• Directors of School Improvement (the supervisors of principals) were directed to ensure that work health and safety were discussed at staff meetings and at all network meetings (network is a meeting of principals of up to 23 schools based on their geographic location).
• A due diligence audit of work health and safety in schools was undertaken early December 2016. The audit was undertaken by Health and Safety professionals from the WorkSafety team in the Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate. The audit made recommendations regarding training; consultation; mentoring; reporting; training records; risk assessments and registers; support services; and policies and procedures. These recommendations were implemented.
• Streamlining operations to ensure a co-ordinated approach to support injured staff, including timely phone and email contact with injured staff from the Education Directorate injury management team.
• A review of risk management processes occurred to ensure that risk assessments were reflective of work health and safety risks, the controls were in line with the hierarchy of control and applied within the context of behaviour management planning, the learning process and student context. Work health and safety professionals work closely with schools and the Education Directorate’s specialist educators and/or allied health team to provide contemporary risk assessments and associated controls designed to mitigate risk and ensure the safety of staff and students.
• An independent assessment of the systems to mitigate the risks of occupational violence commenced in December 2016. The review by David Caple and Associates focused on the requirements of a systems approach for the prevention of physical and psychological injury to Principals, teachers and Learning Support Assistants arising from incidents of occupational violence within ACT schools. This report recommended further training for staff working with students with complex needs, work health and safety risk assessment process and student case management approach, improving data capture for occupational violence incidents, develop closer working relationships with Universities to ensure pre-educators and early educators are provided placements and support to teach students with complex needs. The four main recommendations of the review were accepted in April 2017. The recommendations from this review are well advanced in their implementation.
• The Director-General undertook consultation with staff in May 2017 on the proposed draft occupational violence policy and plan. The policy was launched in July 2017. A suite of tools and initiatives complemented the policy and were developed to enhance the management of Occupational Violence. Tools include: posters and email banners, risk assessment tools and a renewed intranet page on Occupational Violence Management.
• Training learning support assistants through a whole school professional learning or through targeted learning support assistant sessions. This one-day trauma training workshop outlines principles of neuroscience that inform good practice in education and participants develop an understanding of the prevalence and impact of trauma.
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