How can a school show it is exercising its duty of care to staff who are suffering from work-related stress?

“All employers have legal responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to ensure the health safety and welfare at work of their employees.”

That bold statement comes from the government’s Health and Safety Executive website which lays down the duty of care that all employers have for their employees, and of course it applies to schools as much as any other place of work.

Of course, the amount of heavy lifting and the operation of noisy machinery in a school is limited, but there is one area where schools are vulnerable to challenges under the duty of care rules and that is stress.

Schools have a double obligation here: to do whatever is practical to reduce the level of stress; and if there are signs of stress such as anxiety, depression, a decline in work standards, emotional behaviour, time off work, they have to offer support.

But can anything practically be done? 

In fact there are two approaches that schools are using. The first is to look at what aspect(s) of work may be causing stress for that particular teacher and see if anything can be changed (not only for this teacher, but for others who may also be starting to feel stressed within their job).

The other is to offer help and support to the teacher in terms of suggesting a programme of activity that can be used to help overcome the stress.

Of course, the fact that teaching is the profession which now suffers from the third highest level of stress of any occupation in the UK does not make recovery from stress easy.

But if a stress reduction programme is incorporated into the school’s work and is available for any member of staff who is feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of teaching, then it is very possible that some staff who might succumb to serious levels of stress can be helped. The resultant benefits for the teacher and the school are enormous.

By introducing the teacher suffering from stress to various techniques it is quite possible that the teacher will be able to avoid the stress turning into a serious long-term illness, allowing the teacher to make rapid progress on the road to recovery.

Such an approach simply recognises that the only way out of stress is for the individual to undertake the journey of recovery him/herself. That does not mean that the stress-causing factors in the school or elsewhere are ignored, but it is nevertheless essential that the individual teacher is taking the steps to start to deal with stress.

The volume thus helps school managers who don’t suffer from excessive stress to understand what their colleague under stress is going through and to see how she or he can be helped.

It deals not only with ways of reducing the levels of stress that teachers suffer from, but also offers a programme of practical help that can be offered to the teacher who is suffering from stress. The volume also includes a set of templates relating to the school’s policy on stress and a risk assessment programme.

The volume can be bought as a photocopiable ring bound book or on CD Rom.

You can see some sample pages at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/education/T1786.pdf

Publisher’s reference: T1786EMN ISBN: 978 1 86083 840 8

Prices

  • Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £49.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £49.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £56.94 plus £3.95 delivery

Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report… please quote the order ref: T1786EMN

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