Legislations health and social care Essay

Health and safety: It’s important for everyone to be in a safe environment so they can do daily tasks without feeling scared and uncomfortable of something will happen to them for certain so that’s why in every health care setting the health and safety at work act 1974 has been introduced so they can safe guard vulnerable patients in their care. Providers in health care settings need to provide some of the following services to ensure that the service users and the employees themselves are safe when working for example: They need to provide and maintain safety when using equipment’s Provide a safe place of employment Ensure equipment is used safely, stored and delivered from one place to another. Provide a safe place to feel safe and welcomed at all times Look after the health and safety of others. Food standard regulation: The food standard regulation is one of the most important legislation in a health care setting because most hospitals, care homes, schools etc all serve food and it needs to be in a good standard for the service users to eat it without becoming violently ill for example poor hygiene can result to abnormality of different foods compared to the others which can make the person ill. For the service uses to eat without becoming ill this legislations helps guide the workers to do some of the following The controls include: Premises are clean and in a good state of repair Good drainage, lighting and ventilation Sufficient waste disposal facilities Toilet facilities for staff Equipment is in good condition and kept clean Also another guideline they should follow would be the temperature of the food needs to be monitored in order for the food to be served without any  complications and here is the temperature guideline for the foods being stored in specific places: It is an offence to allow food to be kept at temperatures that would cause a risk to health, so you must make sure foods that need temperature control are kept at the right temperature. Foods that need to be kept hot should be kept at 63 °C or above Foods that need to be kept cold should be kept at 8 °C or below (preferably at 5 °C or below) Foods that need to be kept frozen should be kept between -18 °C to -24 °C Manual handling regulations Manual handling regulations is a legislation that was introduced in 1992 for the safety of the people who handle equipment for example people who work in an industry will carry equipment’s and for that reason this legislation was introduced so the people can handle equipment safely without injuring themselves. It was found by a survey that 3 out of 5 people suffered a common injury known as musculoskeletal injury which caused many people to hurt themselves badly and some still haven’t recovered from it. This legislation avoids people lifting something that their body is unable to do, also avoids hazardous manual handling. This is what the employees follow: Use equipment safely according to instructions and training, immediately reporting any defects to their line manager/supervisors. Check each item of manual handling equipment is in safe working order before use