qualification specification, work tasks, job specification or set of standards. It might be left to you to decide in what order you do this, and what approaches you take with your learners to achieve it.
Try and plan your session content to flow logically, and make the subject material interesting and stimulating. Encourage your learners to become actively involved, to think for themselves, and to use their existing skills and knowledge to build upon. You can give regular feedback regarding individual progress so that your learners know what they have achieved.
You could encourage peer support by using the buddy approach. This enables learners to pair up with someone in the group they feel comfortable with. They can then keep in touch between sessions to discuss the topics and support each other if necessary. This approach is particularly useful if one learner misses a session for any reason and needs to catch up.
Knowing your subject and facilitating it in a meaningful way will help your learners achieve their goals.
Activity
Look at the physical, social and learning aspects in Table 1.4 and add any others which you feel are relevant. Choose at least two from each column. Draw a diagram like that in Figure 1.3 (three overlapping circles) and add your aspects to it. Which do you think will interact and overlap, and why?
You might need to adapt the learning environment to ensure that all learners can access equipment and resources safely. This might involve carrying out a risk assessment to check all equipment is safe to use.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding is the term used to refer to the duties and responsibilities that those providing a health, social or education service have to carry out or perform to protect individuals and vulnerable people from harm. You will have a responsibility to adhere to, and maintain, safeguarding measures as part of your role if you work in the UK.
Table 1.4 Examples of physical, social and learning aspects
Following the publication of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act (2006) in the UK, a vetting and barring scheme was established in 2008. This Act created an Independent Barring Board to take all discretionary decisions on whether individuals should be barred from working with children and/or vulnerable adults. Teachers may need to have their criminal background checked via the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). The purpose of the DBS is to help employers to prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults.
In 2006, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), in the UK, produced a document called Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education. This guidance was aimed at local authorities, schools and further education colleges in England who are responsible for promoting the welfare of children and young people, up to the age of 18 (age 25 for those with learning difficulties and/or disabilities). The DfES has now been replaced with the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
Following this, the document Safer Practice, Safer Learning (NIACE, 2007) was produced to provide guidance in relation to adults in further education. It recommends that safeguarding duties extend to whole-organisation policies, values and ethos, and include all staff and learners. It is, therefore, everyone’s duty to promote the concepts of the safe learner.
The Department of Health (2000) document (in England) No Secrets gives a definition of vulnerable adults.
A vulnerable adult is defined as a person ‘who is or may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation’. (Department of Health, 2000, page 8)
A vulnerable adult can be put at risk of harm through a variety of actions, inadequate policies and procedures, and failures of people to act. There are six types of abuse defined by the Department of Health:
• physical
• sexual
• psychological/emotional
• financial or material
• neglect and acts of omission
• discriminatory.
A young person or adult could potentially be the victim of any of the above. It is, therefore, your duty to ensure that you take proper steps to safeguard your learners. If a young person or vulnerable adult discloses any abuse to you, take the disclosure seriously and never dismiss any allegation. An allegation of abuse or neglect may lead to a criminal investigation. Asking leading questions, or attempting to investigate the allegations may cause problems for any subsequent court proceedings.
In this respect, don’t make any promises regarding confidentiality, particularly if you discover something serious which will have to be reported to an authority as part of the law. Explain to your learner that you will need to report the disclosure and share the information with your organisation’s Safeguarding Officer (if there is one) or the person responsible for this (you need to find out who this is at your organisation). They will, where possible, respect the wishes of the individual. However, information will need to be shared with external agencies where it is judged that a person is at risk of suffering significant harm.
Activity
Find out what the policies and procedures are regarding safeguarding at your organisation. What will your responsibilities be and who can you go to should you have any concerns?
Hopefully, the environment you and your learners are in is safe and secure. However, all rooms and equipment should be checked for health and safety hazards. To help ensure that all people in the building are meant to be there, staff, learners and visitors could wear an official name badge. All visitors should be asked to sign in and out of the building, and will possibly need to be accompanied at all times. Anyone not wearing a badge should be challenged if it is safe to do so.
If there is anything you notice, or a learner informs you about which you think could be a potential health, safety or security risk, you must report it. You will also need to be familiar with the organisation’s fire and evacuation procedures, and make sure your learners are too.
There could be circumstances where abuse, threatening behaviour, stealing or bullying might occur. You might notice this, or a learner might tell you about it. If so, you will need to treat the matter seriously and follow it up. Your organisation might have a zero tolerance policy of this type of behaviour, and have a particular procedure which will need to be followed.
Learners will need to know who they can talk to, and know where they can feel safe. There are a number of ways in which they could be involved in identifying safe areas.
Example
During a Sport and Leisure session regarding health and safety, the teacher, Warwick, decided to:
• discuss potential issues and concerns, and what his learners could do if any of these occurred
• identify well-being, personal safety and security issues, and how these might be resolved
• ask his learners to take digital
