Duty of Care is about well-being and good practice. The five core principles are safety, dignity, independence, privacy and communication.
Duty of Care is also a legal obligation to act towards others in a way that protects them from reasonably foreseeable risks.
Duty of Care is defined simply as a legal obligation to: always act in the best interest of individuals and others; not act or fail to act in a way that results in harm; act within your competence and not take on anything you do not believe you can safely do.” ~ Social Care Institute for Excellence.
As you can see from above, this law makes you legally responsible for the safety, dignity, independence and privacy of every person who engages with your business as far as risks to these may be foreseeable, and it also makes you legally responsible for keeping open communication channels.
In effect it’s a catch-all law. It is the law of “I could have told you so” because it makes you responsible for every negative event that could have been foreseen, even if you didn’t cause the risk in the first place. As one example, lets say that your client is leaving your office when the people upstairs have a burst pipe that has leaked into your reception area while you were working. If you can see the puddle, if you can reasonably foresee that letting your client walk on the wet floor may cause them to fall, and they do, then you are legally responsible for not trying to stop them.
Duty of care essentially allows a court to look at your compassion and common sense and penalise you where they are lacking and where that lack contributes to a complaint or loss.
I like to think that we all chose our line of work precisely because we enshrine the right of everyone to feel safe, dignified, independent, in control of their privacy, and in the loop and that we don’t switch that off when the 60 or 90 minutes are up but live by it as a matter of course. If that’s the case then this page will teach you nothing new compared to the subsequent articles in this section, and that’s a good thing.
If you want to sit down and analyse where you do or could express greater care, then duty of care can relate to:
- You. You are responsible for your own safety and care. What does that involve, for you? What are your boundaries?
- Anyone who comes into contact with your services, even if they only make an initial enquiry, or turn up in support of someone else.
- Other laws – Health and safety and the state of your premises
- Client safety in their own physical environment during an online session
- Safeguarding principles particularly when your consumers (end users) are in any way vulnerable
- Being absolutely ready to make referrals or to seek supervision etc so that you only ‘act within your competence’ and act only in the ‘best interest’ of your client.
One excellent practice is to include your habitual care and particularly the contents of your intake form in regular review and reassessment as your skills develop and your client base refines. Doing this is not just an act of care in itself, it also makes sure that nothing is skipped or overlooked in corners of your routine.
Author: Cheryl White, EFT Test Manager