Most of us who have completed a safety induction with an employer or perhaps undertaken some study recently with a College or TAFE, will no doubt have heard the words “workplace health and safety” or “safe work” more than once!! In fact, while we may not have all the safety terms memorised in our brains, we are all on the same page in wanting to ensure that the young people who come to our events are safe. Parents and our campus pastors are probably even more motivated to ensure this happens!!
A risk assessment is a formalised and logical process that identifies hazards, plans to prevent harm to others as much as possible, and purposes to learn from event to event on how to improve our safety outcomes. There are many web resources that can help you write a risk assessment. A useful web search is “workplace health and safety risk assessments [name of your State or region]”.
A question that is often asked is, “But if I am already focussed on keeping my young people safe, why do I need to write it down and keep a record of my plans. Arrghhh isn’t that even MORE paperwork??!!”
Good question – yes – but there are some good reasons why you would take time before each event to plan for safety with your team and write down your plans. Firstly, writing it down can help clarify your thoughts and bring information gaps to your attention. Secondly, when it’s written, it is more easily shared with your team; and consultation and communication with your team are key features of safety management. Thirdly, your written document can be stored and used as a historical record should an incident occur and you need to demonstrate that you took steps to manage your event’s safety.
Riskezi is an online tool that allows you to write and importantly store your risk assessments for future reference. Our team has many years’ experience in working in the church environment and we have a custom designed tool to suit your needs.
This article was written by Karyn Wright who is a part of the RiskEZI team. RiskEZI –where risk management is made easy! www.riskezi.com
RiskEZI has provided some safety guides to some of the games listed on YTHMIN. Use this guide as a starting point for your risk assessment, alter and change it so it is relevant to your youth ministry.
The download links are available below.
