Data protection is an often an overlooked part of working with children and young adults. Whether you are hosting an occasional event, running your own school, organising workshops or clubs, you have access to quite a lot of information about your students.

In my previous posts I have talked about the process of writing and recording risk assessments. 

My journey into completing risk assessments began just under 30 years ago. I was training to be a primary school teacher and one of the things we had to learn to do was write risk assessments.

If you’ve ever put on a performance anywhere, you’ll know that almost every venue will ask you for a copy of your risk assessment and your public liability insurance. Why is that? As discussed previously, written risk assessments will show that you’ve thought carefully about the risks of the activities/event involved, and how to minimise any risks that are considered high. For the venue, their own insurance will be dependent on proving that the hirer understands the risks involved and has taken steps to minimise them. It also reassures them that you are knowledgeable and that you’re putting in place strategies to minimise any potential dangers.

How risky is the activity or event? The best way that I’ve found over the years is to assess the risk using a sliding scale from no injury up to a fatality. I can almost hear you thinking that using the word fatality is a bit extreme, but remember that we’re not saying what will happen but what the worst thing that can happen is.

In my previous post, I’ve already established that risk assessments are part of our everyday lives. Today’s thoughts are on why we sometimes need written assessments instead of a purely mental ones. The answer is quite straightforward – it is due to the level of risk posed by a situation/action and also how many other people are involved.

For example, when we are cooking, we assess whether or not the food is sufficiently cooked through to not cause food poisoning. When we’re taking food from the oven, we’ve already assessed that the baking tins are hot and likely to burn so we use oven gloves or some other barrier to protect our skin. If you were to burn yourself or get ill, there’s no one to blame. You assessed the risk, an accident may have occurred, but no one other than yourself was responsible.