It has been raining for the last three days, and educators and children are starting to feel the effects of being inside for three days. The children in the 4-5's room are becoming increasingly noisy and are squabbling over minor issues.

This morning the rain has eased a little and educators are able to set up some gross motor activities on the verandah. Senior Diploma educator and Room Leader Dan and Certificate III trainee educator Leila (who has been at the centre for eight weeks) have been assigned to supervise this area. A risk assessment was conducted to ensure avoidance of overcrowding and minimise the likelihood of accidents, the number of children on the verandah has been restricted to 12 children at any one time.

Dan is supervising an obstacle course, and Leila is playing a bean bag game with some children. One of the children falls from the obstacle course and hits her head on the metal A-frame. Dan calls to Leila that he is taking the child inside to get some ice. Leila nods her head and continues with the game. Moments later Leila looks up to see three children running around the bike track in the rain. She calls for them to come back, however one child slips on the path and falls. Leila runs out to him.

At this moment, the Director steps out onto the verandah to see the children unsupervised and Leila and a few children in the rain.

Dan returns and sees that the Director is not happy. Even though the educator:child ratios had been maintained, Director Kate later explains to Leila and Dan that errors in judgment had been made which put the children at risk. While Kate didn't assign blame, she made it clear that Dan and Leila should have communicated more effectively.

As a learning and training opportunity, Kate asks Dan to complete a risk assessment on the incident, identifying the policies and procedures that both Dan and Leila should have applied when supervising the children.

Later that day Kate added 'health and safety training needs relevant to supervisors' to her agenda for the Room Leaders meeting.

Q10. Identify two error of judgements made by Dan, and suggest alternative actions Dan could have taken to reduce the risk to the children and meet his responsibilities as a senior educator.

Q11. Identify the cause or source of the risk, and the possible or likely consequence of the risk.

Q12. Identify the control measures put in place and explain why these control measures were ineffective.

Q13. Identify one policy and one regulatory requirement that Dan and Leila should have been aware of and applied in this scenario?

Q14. As a result of the incident what two actions did Kate take in relation to workplace training?

Scenario: Health and Safety

At the Room Leaders meeting, Kate elected to discuss with the team communication strategies and their application, to encourage and assist educators to meet health and safety requirements.

It was decided at the meeting that along with WHS, children's health and safety would become a regular agenda item for all room team meetings and for the monthly whole team meetings.

Kate also decided that any updates to children's health and safety practices would be discussed at the monthly team meetings along with regular training bytes.

Q15. List five communication techniques that Kate could apply during day to day practices to support and ensure the team's WHS knowledge is current, or can be applied when issues in safety practices are addressed promptly. You may conduct independent research or refer to your text to support your response.

Q16. Provide three examples of additional strategies Kate could use to ensure her team is up-to-date in children's health and safety practices.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Q10 Two errors of judgment made by Dan 1 Lack of Communication Dan failed to effectively communicate with Leila about the situation and his actions Instead of informing her directly that he was taking ... View the full answer