Permission to use picture thanks to Inclusive Services, City of St. Johns: www.stjohns.ca
Minimizing Risk
Education, Training and Equipment
Education and training are the best ways to ensure worker health and safety in education. Assessing risks is the responsibility of both employers and employees, but employers must teach employees how to assess their work spaces for safety risks, how to reduce risks in the workplace, and how to wear required protective equipment . Employers must also provide training to educational workers working with students whose exceptionalities pose a risk to worker safety so that employees can take steps to minimize risks of violence while supporting students with these exceptionalities.
Workers need to know:
* what the risks to their health are and how to minimize risks
* how to wear required protective equipment
* procedures for supporting students who pose a risk to worker and student health and safety (as outlined in a Student's Positive Behaviour Support Plan) and how to reduce those risks to health and safety
* their responsibilities for supporting students with exceptionalities and helping them learn skills to decrease behaviours that place workers, students and themselves at risk
Workers need to take actions to:
* support students with exceptionalities by providing programming that helps them decrease behaviours that place workers, students and themselves at risk
* continually assess, document, and report unsafe working conditions and safety risks in the workplace to employers
* reduce or eliminate if possible, safety risks to workers and students in the workplace, and report steps taken to ameliorate the situation
* minimize risks to their health and safety and the health and safety of other workers and students by wearing required protective equipment and following procedures for supporting students who pose a risk to worker and student health and safety
* document and report all incidents of violence and harassment in the workplace to the employer
* seek additional training when needed (for example when working with a new group of students with different behavioural challenges than populations of students the worker previously worked with)
Employers are responsible for:
* ensuring all workers have the training required to support students who pose health and safety risks to workers and students and that this training is repeated as often as necessary to ensure workers maintain the required level of awareness of procedures for minimizing risks.
* continually assessing, documenting, reporting and ameliorating unsafe working and learning conditions.
* ensuring students who pose safety risks are being supported with programming that helps them decrease behaviours that place workers, students and themselves at risk
School boards are required to provide education and training to workers in order to minimize the risk of violence and injury.
Education can include, but is not limited to:
- making staff aware of their rights and responsibilities as workers in an educational setting
- making staff aware of the triggers for a specific student
- teaching staff strategies for teaching students with behaviour exceptionalities
- creating preventative environments that create successful classroom experiences for all students
- reviewing and learning how to use Positive Behaviour Support Plans and Strategies for a Successful Day support documents
Training can include, but is not limited to:
- learning how to use non-violent crisis intervention techniques to support students with exceptionalities that may require this support
- learning how to use Applied Behavioural Analysis and teaching strategies to use to support students with Autism or ASD
- learning how to wear protective equipment to minimize risks to worker health and safety
- Mental Health First Aid
- Safe Talk Training
Staff can also take courses that help them meet the needs of the students they teach:
- American Sign Language to help them communicate with non-verbal students
- AQ courses specifically aimed at teaching students with ASD
Safety Equipment:
Requirements for Personal Protective Equipment are included in the Occupational Health and Safety Act