Employers Health & Safety

This section aims to answer the Question, what do i have to do to ensure a young person is safe on work experience?

• Have an inspection undertaken by Health and Safety Body nominated by the school
• Agree with the Health and Safety Body what is and is not appropriate for the young person to do, taking into consideration any specific information that the schools may share with you

• Share the significant findings of any risk assessment are shared with the school and Parents/Carers of the young person
  
  
  
  
  

  1) Have an inspection from the Health and Safety Body nominated by the school

  The school will send you a form to fill in giving your consent for the Placement. When you sign this form you will also be signing to say that have read and accepted the “Letter of understanding” which is on the back of the form. If the back of the form is black do not sign until you have seen what you are agreeing to!

  A few months before the young person starts the placement, you will be contacted by the Health and Safety Body, funded by the Local Authority, who will arrange for a placement Vetter to visit and ask a few questions about Health and Safety and Insurance and do a brief inspection of the premises. This usually takes between 30-45 minutes. Companies are very rarely deemed unsuitable for work experience and, where they are, it is usually due to insurance. For the purpose of work experience, Students are counted as employees and you must therefore have Employers Liability Insurance in place and inform your insurers that you are having a work experience Student.

  2) Agree with the Health and Safety body what is and not appropriate for the young person to do. Take into consideration any specific information that the schools may share with you

  As a company you may already have arrangements in place to decide what you expect apprentices and other inexperienced staff to do, what machinery they can and cannot use, what areas that are out of bounds and so on. The placement Vetter will assist you in this if you wish and will agree a basic job description for the young person. In addition to this the school may directly share information about a specific young person including any disability, medical condition or special needs that the young person may have, which you may have to take into account when deciding what they can and cannot do.

  3) Share the significant findings of any risk assessment are shared with the school and Parents/Carers of the young person

  As you are aware, all the employers have a responsibility to carry out risk assessment record the significant findings of the assessment. While a young person is on Work Experience, the requirements to provide information are the same as for the other employees. There is, however, an additional requirement to provide the parent or guardians of young person’s on Work Experience with information on the key findings of the risk assessment and the control measures taken before the young person starts. Schools will request this information from you, and will usually send you a blank risk assessment form which can be used for this purpose, although you can of course use your own paperwork. They will then send this paper work to the young person’s Parents or Guardians. On the reserve of the Risk Assessment in a induction form that could be used on the young person’s first day.

  Further Information on Health and Safety on Work Experience can be obtained by emailing mperks@connexionswest.org.uk or Phoning Mark Perks on 0117 9074515