Lottery project workers radiate safety messages
The Community Fund project for the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Voluntary Sector atttracted 350 organisations from all over London, involved in the following work: refugee advice, training for unemployed, people with mental health problems, people with hearing,visual, physical impairment, detainees, drug and alcohol projects, childcare work, work with the sick, elderly, housing projects, Citizens Advice, law centres, education and language schools, luncheon clubs, soup kitchens, community centres, gardening and environmental projects, domestic violence …and many more.
The main hazards faced by BME voluntary groups included racial discrimination, stress, lack of resources, poor physical working conditions, office hazards, fire hazards, lone working, low pay, trauma from war and persecution, manual handling, lack of health and safety knowledge, VDU hazards.
Language interpretation was necessary at times and the community groups provided their own staff for this on many occasions.
Voluntary sector organisations are not considered as high priority work for local authority enforcement agencies. On average, a registered premise may get a visit from an environmental health officer once every 20 years. Compliance with health and safety law is of little value if enforcement is at a minimum. The culture of "we will do it whatever it takes" is still prevalent in the voluntary sector and they are under such tremendous pressure from funders to produce outputs and meet targets that health and safety is often compromised.
What the groups said
" We all think that this training helped us realise the importance of being trained in Health and Safety matters. Now we are quite sure what to do and how to organise things in our school in order to provide safe environment for our children."
The Head of the Znaniye Russian School in Ealing run by volunteers:
" I wanted to thank you for putting this training on for us….. now I have the confidence to fill out risk assessments based on the training I did with you."
A worker from Homelink a Quaker Group
"Thank you for your visit last week. I really appreciated all the time you spent going through the various areas on the health and safety checklist. Your suggestions and comments will also help us to make relatively simple changes that will improve our health and safety."
Victim Support in Enfield.
"Thank you for delivering a wonderful training course."
Michael Bao, the Chinese Community Network
"thank you for delivering the training/talk to the members of the Management Council. Everyone found the session very helpful and informative and suggested that something similar would benefit the staff of the CABs."
Citizens Advice in Haringey