In Association With Learning work book to contribute to the achievement of the underpinning knowledge for unit: SHC24 Introduction to Duty of Care in Health, Social Care or Children s and Young People s Settings Credit value 1 All rights reserved, no parts of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored or transmitted without the prior permission of The Learning Company Ltd Version 1-01/10/10
Learner s Name: Learner s Signature: (Please sign inside the box) Employer s Name: Employer s Address: Start Date: Anticipated End Date: College Provider: Learner s Enrolment Number: Mentor s Name: Assessor s Name: Internal Verifier s Name: I V s Sampling Date: QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 2
INTRODUCTION This workbook provides the learning you need to help you to achieve a unit towards your qualification. Your qualification on the Qualification and Credit Framework (QCF) is made up of units, each with their own credit value; some units might be worth 3 credits, some might have 6 credits, and so on. Each credit represents 10 hours of learning and so gives you an idea of how long the unit will take to achieve. Qualification rules state how many credits you need to achieve and at what levels, but your assessor or tutor will help you with this. Awarding Organisation rules state that you need to gather evidence from a range of sources. This means that, in addition to completing this workbook, you should also find other ways to gather evidence for your tutor/assessor such as observed activity; again, your assessor will help you to plan this. To pass your qualification, you need to achieve all of the learning outcomes and/or performance criteria for each unit. Your qualification may contain essential units and optional units. You ll need to complete a certain amount of units with the correct credit value to achieve your qualification. Your tutor/assessor can talk to you more about this if you re worried and they ll let you know how you re doing as you progress. This workbook has been provided to your learning provider under licence by The Learning Company Ltd; your training provider is responsible for assessing this qualification. Both your provider and your Awarding Organisation are then responsible for validating it. THE STUDY PROGRAMME This unit is designed for individuals who are working in or wish to pursue a career in their chosen sector. It will provide a valuable, detailed and informative insight into that sector and is an interesting and enjoyable way to learn. Your study programme will increase your knowledge, understanding and abilities in your industry and help you to become more confident, by underpinning any practical experience you may have with sound theoretical knowledge. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 3
WHERE TO STUDY The best way to complete this workbook is on your computer. That way you can type in your responses to each activity and go back and change it if you want to. Remember, you can study at home, work, your local library or wherever you have access to the internet. You can also print out this workbook and read through it in paper form if you prefer. If you choose to do this, you ll have to type up your answers onto the version saved on your computer before you send it to your tutor/assessor (or handwrite them and post the pages). WHEN TO STUDY It s best to study when you know you have time to yourself. Your tutor/assessor will help you to set some realistic targets for you to finish each unit, so you don t have to worry about rushing anything. Your tutor/assessor will also let you know when they ll next be visiting or assessing you. It s really important that you stick to the deadlines you ve agreed so that you can achieve your qualification on time. HOW TO STUDY Your tutor/assessor will agree with you the order for the workbooks to be completed; this should match up with the other assessments you are having. Your tutor/assessor will discuss each workbook with you before you start working on it, they will explain the book s content and how they will assess your workbook once you have completed it. Your Assessor will also advise you of the sort of evidence they will be expecting from you and how this will map to the knowledge and understanding of your chosen qualification. You may also have a mentor appointed to you. This will normally be a line manager who can support you in your tutor/assessor s absence; they will also confirm and sign off your evidence. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 4
You should be happy that you have enough information, advice and guidance from your tutor/assessor before beginning a workbook. If you are experienced within your job and familiar with the qualification process, your tutor/assessor may agree that you can attempt workbooks without the detailed information, advice and guidance. THE UNITS We ll start by introducing the unit and clearly explaining the learning outcomes you ll have achieved by the end of the unit. There is a learner details page at the front of each workbook. Please ensure you fill all of the details in as this will help when your workbooks go through the verification process and ensure that they are returned to you safely. If you do not have all of the information, e.g. your learner number, ask your tutor/assessor. To begin with, just read through the workbook. You ll come across different activities for you to try. These activities won t count towards your qualification but they ll help you to check your learning. You ll also see small sections of text called did you know? These are short, interesting facts to keep you interested and to help you enjoy the workbook and your learning. At the end of this workbook you ll find a section called assessments. This section is for you to fill in so that you can prove you ve got the knowledge and evidence for your chosen qualification. They re designed to assess your learning, knowledge and understanding of the unit and will prove that you can complete all of the learning outcomes. Each Unit should take you about 3 to 4 hours to complete, although some will take longer than others. The important thing is that you understand, learn and work at your own pace. YOU WILL RECEIVE HELP AND SUPPORT If you find that you need a bit of help and guidance with your learning, then please get in touch with your tutor/assessor. If you know anyone else doing the same programme as you, then you might find it very useful to talk to them too. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 5
Certification When you complete your workbook, your tutor/assessor will check your work. They will then sign off each unit before you move on to the next one. When you ve completed all of the required workbooks and associated evidence for each unit, your assessor will submit your work to the Internal Verifier for validation. If it is validated, your training provider will then apply for your certificate. Your centre will send your certificate to you when they receive it from your awarding organisation. Your tutor/assessor will be able to tell you how long this might take. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 6
Unit SHC24: Introduction to duty of care in health, social care or children s and young people s settings About this unit This unit is aimed at those who work in health or social care settings or with children or young people in a wide range of settings. It introduces the concept of duty of care and awareness of dilemmas or complaints that may arise where there is a duty of care There are three learning outcomes to this unit. The learner will be able to: 1. Understand the implications of duty of care 2. Understand support available for addressing dilemmas that may arise about duty of care 3. Know how to respond to complaints What is duty of care? The concept of duty of care has an interesting and somewhat surprising origin. In 1932 a court in the UK considered a case which involved snails that had found their way into a glass of ginger beer! The woman who consumed the ginger beer suffered from nervous shock as a result of seeing the snails in the bottom of her glass and, in a landmark case, she brought an action against the publican who had served her the drink. She was able to establish that the publican owed her a duty of care and that he had breached that duty of care by unwittingly allowing the snails to get into her glass. After great deliberation, the court upheld the unfortunate woman s claim and the doctrine of duty of care was born. Since 1932 the courts have been full of people claiming that a duty of care was owed to them by someone, that the person has been negligent in observing that duty of care and has, as a result, breached it. That 1932 case has led to a society in which there is a huge amount of litigation, where for example, councils are being sued for failing to put up signs that warn of pending dangers, publicans for allowing intoxicated people to drive off from their premises, and homeowners when a trespasser trips over an object left in an awkward place in their own home. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 7
A duty of care is the requirement that all health and social care professionals, and organisations providing health and care services, must put the interests of the people who use their services first. They also have to do everything in their power to keep people safe from harm. Your duty of care underpins everything that you do; it is what underlies the Codes of Practice and it should be built into your practice on a day-to-day level. Exercising your duty of care is also a legal requirement, and would be tested in court in the event of a case of negligence or malpractice. People have a right to expect that when a professional is providing support, they will be kept safe and not be neglected or exposed to any unnecessary risks. The expression is that we owe a duty of care to the people we work with. Owe is a useful word to describe the nature of the duty of care because it is just like a debt. It is something that you must pay as a part of choosing to become a professional in the field of social care. Having a duty of care towards the people you work with is not unique to social care; all professions who work with people have a duty of care. This includes doctors, teachers, nurses, midwives and many others. Thinking about the duty of care that you owe to people is helpful when you are planning your work. It makes you consider whether what you were planning to do is in the best interests of the person you are working with. This is not only about physical risks; you also have a duty of care to treat people with dignity and respect. Each of the regulators in the UK countries requires that professionals working in social care exercises a duty of care towards everyone for whom they work. All four of the regulators have agreed a joint Code of Practice that sets out very clearly the expectation that each person who undertakes a role as a professional in social care will follow the Code of Practice and will be held to account by the regulator if they fail to do so. They key section of the Code of Practice is section 3: QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 8
As a social service worker you must promote the independence of service users while protecting them as far as possible from danger or harm. This includes: 3.1 promoting the independence of service users and assisting them to understand and exercise their rights 3.2 using established processes and procedures to challenge and report dangerous, abusive, discriminatory or exploitative behaviour and practice 3.3 following practice and procedures designed to keep you and other people safe from violent and abusive behaviour at work 3.4 bringing to the attention of your employer or the appropriate authority resource or operational difficulties that might get in the way of the delivery of safe care 3.5 informing your employer or an appropriate authority where the practice of colleagues may be unsafe or adversely affecting standards of care 3.6 complying with employers health and safety policies including those relating to substance abuse 3.7 helping service users and carers to make complaints, taking complaints seriously and responding to them or passing them to the appropriate person 3.8 recognising and using responsibly the power that comes from your work with service users and carers Each of the subsections identifies the behaviours that are expected of professionals. This is not just a set of ideas that sound like a good thing. This is the basis on which your professional conduct will be judged. Recognising when a duty of care exists One of the difficulties in trying to work out when a duty of care exists is that courts always do it with the benefit of hindsight. Whether a duty of care is owed or not very much depends on the facts of the matter, including the positions of the people involved. For example, an expert giving advice to a non-expert can be expected to have a duty of care to the non-expert. The expert is considered to have superior knowledge and the non-expert rightfully expects to be able to rely on that superior knowledge. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 9
The expert thus assumes a duty of care in giving the advice and, if that advice is given negligently and without care, then he or she can expect a court to find that the duty of care has been breached. It is obvious that carers in child care owe a duty of care to the children in their care. Trained carers are seen as experts, although this varies depending on the level and extent of their training and qualifications. Children rely on their carers to ensure that they are properly cared for. It is not just children to whom the duty is owed, but also their families. Parents expect that carers will use their expertise to care for their children appropriately. As a consequence, carers also owe a duty of care to the parents of those children. The level of the duty of care owed is affected by the status of the person claiming that a duty is owed. An example of this would be a situation in which an estate agent is selling a property that requires some renovation. If the potential purchaser is someone who is inexperienced in housing then the agent has a high duty of care to ensure that the potential buyer understands what he or she is taking on before entering into a contract. If the potential purchaser is a builder however, the duty of care owed may be far lower, simply because of the builder s level of expertise. An extremely high duty of care is owed to children generally because of their limited ability to care for themselves, and a much higher duty of care is owed to an infant than to a school-aged child because of the differences in their ability to look after themselves and attend to some of their own needs. Safeguarding or protection of individuals Knowing that you must exercise your duty of care towards everyone you work with provides a clear guide to how you should behave, and how you must consider those you work with. Following a Code of Practice and thinking about your duty of care means that your practice will be safer because you will stop to think if you are working in the best interests of the person you are supporting and if you are keeping them from harm. The concept of safeguarding, whether it is children or vulnerable adults, is broader than protection. Safeguarding is also about keeping children or vulnerable adults safe from any sort of harm, such as illness, abuse or injury. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 10
This means all agencies and families working together and taking responsibility for the safety of children and vulnerable adults, whether it is by promoting health, preventing accidents or protecting children or vulnerable adults who have been abused. Protection is about what you do when someone has been harmed, or is at imminent risk of harm. Your duty of care is closely linked to protection and safeguarding, because you have a responsibility to keep people safe from harm. DID YOU KNOW? Notre Dame de Pari Cathedral was started in 1015 and completed over 400 years later in 1439. ACTIVITY ONE Circle the words or phrases you would associate with safeguarding December Harm Protection Injury July Risk Carers Rely April How complaints influence service provision Complaints to an organisation are an important part of the monitoring process and they should be considered as part of every review of service provision. If everyone simply put up with poor service and no one complained, they would never be aware of where the service needs improvement. Similarly, if complaints are not responded to appropriately, services will never improve. QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 11
All service providers or organisations commissioning services will have a system for complaints. There will be clear information about how and to whom a complaint should be made, and timescales for it to be dealt with. Most important, though, is what happens to complaints after they have been resolved with the individuals concerned. An effective complaints system will analyse all complaints and feed them into service reviews. This way management can identify: Poor-quality services Services that are being delivered in the wrong way, or in the wrong place Services that are needed but not currently provided This helps with service planning and gives organisations the opportunity to identify changes and new developments that are needed. DID YOU KNOW? Every time you lick a stamp, you re consuming 0.1 of a calorie. ACTIVITY TWO Circle the words or phrases you would associate with complaints Christmas Service Individuals Improve Easter Quality Influence Changes May Day QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 12
Handling complaints Your organisation should have a complaints policy. This should be publicised and information on it should be readily available in the form of leaflets, posters, a complaints form, both web-based and printed. All public service organisations are required to have a complaints procedure and to make the procedure readily available for people to use. Part of your role may be to support people in making complaints or in handling complaints made to you. You may support people: Directly, by supporting them in following the procedure Indirectly, by making sure that they are aware of the complaints procedure and are able to follow it You also need to learn to respond openly and appropriately to any comments or complaints you receive from people about their support. Most complaints procedures will involve an informal stage, where complaints are discussed before they become more formal issues. If a complaint is made to you, then you should: Make sure the person understands how to use the complaints procedure Explain to them how it works and when they can expect to receive a response Offer support in following the procedure if necessary Advise your manager that the complaint is being made. Do not: Attempt to resolve complaints yourself Discuss the complaint with the person it is about Discourage people from making complaints Promise that you will sort it out Discuss the complaint with colleagues or anyone other than your manager QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 13
Your duty of care is wide ranging and it forms the basis of your professional role. As a social care worker, you have a position of great responsibility for some of the most vulnerable people in society. Your responsibility to exercise a duty of care is their protection. DID YOU KNOW? The first time chocolate bar was made in Mexico about 300 years ago. Much later, Cadbury (British company) start to produce edible chocolate in the 1840 s and it s become famous worldwide. ACTIVITY THREE Circle the words or phrases you would associate with handling complaints Protection Banana Resolve Plum Receive Manager Discuss Procedure Melon UNIT SHC 24: SIGN-OFF Assessor s Name: Assessor s Signature: Date: Learner s Name: Learner s Signature: Date: Mentor s Name: Mentor s Signature: Date: QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 14
UNIT SHC 24: ASSESSMENT ASSESSMENT ONE Define the term duty of care ASSESSMENT TWO Describe how the duty of care affects your own work role QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 15
ASSESSMENT THREE Describe dilemmas that may arise between the duty of care and an individual s rights ASSESSMENT FOUR Explain where to get additional support and advice about how to resolve such dilemmas QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 16
ASSESSMENT FIVE Describe how to respond to complaints ASSESSMENT SIX Explain the main points of agreed procedures for handling complaints QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 17
UNIT SHC 24: ASSESSMENT SIGN-OFF Assessor s Name: Assessor s Signature: Date: Learner s Name: Learner s Signature: Date: Mentor s Name: Mentor s Signature: Date: QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 18
All rights reserved, No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored or transmitted without the prior permission of website: www.thelearningcompanyuk.com e-mail: info@thelearningcompanyuk.com QCF ACD H & SC L2 Licensed until Feb 12 Unit SHC 24 Page 19