Supporting a charity to meet its health and safety obligations

The client is a medium sized charity supporting children and young people living with cancer and providing their parents with emotional and financial support during difficult times of hospital stays and end of life care.

The client needed to understand its overall health and safety obligations and ensure their compliance, making sure the correct documentation was in place and ensuring managers understood their heath and safety responsibilities.

We initially carried out a health and safety “audit”, reviewing what was already available and talking with some of the managers, at various locations that the charity was based, to understand the baseline and pull together a proposal of health and safety activity that would be required.

We spent a few days getting to know the client, the managers and the work they do and visited some of their locations. From this initial assessment we were able to produce health and safety documents including policy and procedures, updated employee safety records and carry out training so they were health and safety compliant and aware of their ongoing obligations.

The client had approached us having sent in a query via the website. They were already aware of us, through a mutual work contact, and wanted to know more about our skills and experience in supporting their needs. Our health and safety consultants were able to demonstrate their knowledge, talk about existing client work and this gave the client confidence that we could support them.

We worked with them for a few years, providing ad hoc health and safety advice and guidance, an annual health and safety audit, site inspections, updated documentation as regulations and needs changed, and training to all new hires to ensure they remained health and safety aware and compliant. As the charity grew, they were able to hire their own health and safety advisors.

We believe this is a good example of how we develop a close working relationship with our clients. The charity had been aware of us through a mutual contact, and we were able to make a connection that helped meet their needs successfully over a number of years.