Eclipse Employers Blog

Appropriate Behaviour Guidelines for Employers

Hello all

We have been working on an aide memoir with regard to appropriate behaviour when working with young people and vulnerable adults. 

These guidelines apply to children below the age of 18 and includes people aged 19+ with special needs.

Every child or vulnerable adult deserves to be happy and secure in their activities.   Unfortunately, sometimes people may pose a risk to children or vulnerable adults and may wish to harm them.  It is therefore the duty of every organisation to put in place safeguards to protect the children, young people or vulnerable adults with whom they work.

In addition, organisations will want to consider how to avoid putting their workers in positions where abuse might be alleged, and to ensure that all workers know exactly what to do should abuse be suspected.  The emphasis has widened in recent years to not only protect the vulnerable from abuse and neglect but to actively promote the welfare of children and young people - not just to protect but to safeguard.

For all organisations working with children, young people or vulnerable adults, it is essential to carefully consider safeguarding both vulnerable people and the staff who have responsibility for them.  Such organisations should draw up a safeguarding policy.  Alongside this there should be a set of procedures to put what is intended into practice. 

It is the responsibility of all such organisations to continually review and monitor their safeguarding policy and procedures, gaining further advice and information wherever possible.  All of your employees should be aware of your policy and procedures in order to understand their individual responsibilities and help promote best practice.

    The information provided is by no means an exhaustive list but we hope it will provide useful guidance on some of the issues which may need to to be considered in your dealings with young people and vulnerable adults…

Download Appropriate Behaviour Guidelines for Employers

If, in your judgement, any protection issues arise in respect to any of our students, please contact us on 01933 358492.

European Good Practice Awards 2008

Hi all

Just to let you know we've added a post on the 2008  European Good Practice Awards  - please visit our Health & Safety pages for more infomation.

European Health & Safety week (20th - 24th October 2008)

Hi all

We are participating in the European Health & Safety week (20th - 24th October 2008) again this year...

The European Agency for Health and Safety at Work are currently running a 2 year campaign on Risk Assessments - the aim being to show that risk assessment is not necessarily complicated, bureaucratic or a task only for experts.

The campaign also aims to raise awareness on this issue, provide information and practical advice, encourage activities that have a positive impact in the workplace, and identify and recognise good practice.

Full details and useful links can be found in the Health & Safety section of our Blog - please take a look...

Fire Reforms Presentation

Please visit our Health & Safety section of our site to access a Powerpoint Presentation which we thought you might find useful. 

It outlines the recent Fire Safety Reforms and includes pointers on ensuring you meet all of the requirements of the new regulations.

As ever, your comments would be greatly appreciated.

England is now Smoke Free

It is now against the law to smoke or allow smoking in virtually all public places, workplaces and work vehicles.

Here's a checklist to make sure you've done everything to comply with the new law:

1. Have you displayed compliant 'no-smoking' signs at the entrances to smokefree premises and in work vehicles?
2. Have you closed any indoor smoking rooms that do not comply with the new law?
3. Are your staff and customers aware that your premises are now smokefree?
4. Are you and your staff prepared to ensure that no one smokes in smokefree premises or vehicles?

If any of your staff or customers want to give up smoking, the NHS offers a range of excellent free support, including local NHS Stop Smoking Services and the Together Programme - an interactive support programme that uses medical research and insights from ex-smokers to help people stop smoking.

For more information, visit our Health & Safety section of our site, call the NHS Smoking Helpline on 0800 169 0 169 or visit gosmokefree.co.uk.

The UK Smoking Ban

We have been updating our Health and Safety pages this week with information on the new UK Smoking Ban that comes into force 1st July 2007.

For more information on the ban visit the Health & Safety part of our weblog.

Q & A Session with Brian Mead on the Usefulness of our Site

A little while ago we asked Brian Mead, Office Manager at Real Estate Services in Kempston to answer some questions on our website and in particular how useful he found the Equality & Diversity and Health & Safety pages.

Eclipse (E):  Did you find the Equality and H&S pages useful?

Brian Mead (BM):  As a small business with little knowledge of the minefield of regulations that must be complied with, we found the information required in abundance on the Eclipse Web Site.   We were and still are very grateful that they have gone to the trouble to collate all the necessary so that it is easily accessible and can be understood by the layperson.

E:  Where did it particularly help you and your Company and what information were you able to use?

BM:  As we had no formal or written policies in place on either of issues we found all that was required for us to be able to produce (with the examples shown) a satisfactory, but more to the point, an acceptable Equal Opportunities Policy that this Company now uses.     The H&S Links provided on the site were probably the most useful as they enabled us to produce posters and policy statements after guiding us, step by step, through Risk Assessment procedures.

E:  What did you do with the information available?

BM:  This has probably been indicated by the foregoing, but we produced Policies, Policy Statements for display, H&S Guidance sheets and posters.    As well as displaying the information in the workplace we have reproduced all the information in our ‘Employee Handbook’ so that each person has their own personal copies.

E:  Is there anything that can be improved upon or that might be helpful if it were included?

BM:  We believe that little can be done to improve the site as all the information we required was readily available.   If we were to be really cheeky one might suggest that Eclipse did everything in future!!!!  HA HA.

WELL DONE ECLIPSE TRAINING AND THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HELP!

New Legislation updates

Hello all

As many of you may already be aware, on 1st October 2006, some new legislation comes into force regarding fire risk assessments and age discrimination...

We've added some new posts to both the Health & Safety and Equality & Diversity pages of our site with details of how these regulations will affect you along with links to more information, advice and support. ..

European Health & Safety Week

European Health & Safety Week kicks off on 23 October 2006.

This year’s campaign slogan is ‘Safe Start’ and is dedicated to the occupational safety and health of young people.   Please go to our Health & Safety Site for more information on what's happening and for details of the European Good Practice Awards 2006. ...

New Dedicated Sites

We are committed to raising awareness by promoting the importance of Equality & Diversity and Health and Safety in the workplace.

Since we created the site, we have been asking you what you would like to see and working hard to make it as user-friendly as possible. 

The things people kept asking us for was more guidance with regard to Equality & Diversity and Health & Safety issues.  Since then we have been adding posts, good practice guides as well as links to relevant sites which we hope you have found useful.

We have now decided to expand our site and to create dedicated sections for both Equality & Diversity and Health & Safety which we hope will prove to be valuable resources for you.