Child Safety or School Reputation
In recent years within Australia there have been some glaring examples of conflict between the duty of institutions to individuals in their care, and the perceived risk of public scrutiny or litigation. Nevertheless, it might come as a surprise to parents to discover that the safety of their children must compete with risks to the public image of Schools and the Department of Education and Training in Western Australia. The Department’s policy is illustrated in its Risk Management Manual, which gives equal weight to risks involving child safety, and risks involving the reputation of a school and the Department, allowing the possibility for the two to be in direct conflict in the mind of any decision maker. Instead of arbitrarily prioritizing child safety, the manual invites school safety officers to judge the reputation of the school as having the greatest priority in a particular set of circumstances. An example at our local High School illustrates the point quite dramatically.
A contractor had been employed to cut down and mulch several trees in one corner of the school grounds, adjacent to the main entrance. Work commenced at approximately 7.30am on a normal school day, and the contractor parked a truck and chipping machine at the curbside with the chute of the machine aimed in the direction of the school entrance. The tray of the truck was partly covered with a canopy, but this was insufficient to capture all the chips being expelled at high speed from the machine, and the chipper was spewing chips on both sides of the truck and directly over the truck a distance of up to 23 metres. The operation continued in this fashion for more than two hours until a missile from the machine struck the windscreen of a car passing on the opposite side of the road.
The motorist brought the apparent hazard to the attention of the operator, who denied the flying chips posed any risk, and chose instead to question the motorist’s right to complain. It was only when the motorist advised the operator his intention to report the matter to Worksafe and Police Traffic Branch that the operation was halted. The operator immediately instructed his staff to clean up the chips which had scattered over the road. The motorist also brought the problem to the attention of the school administration, and questioned why the contractor had been allowed to operate in an unsafe manner for several hours that morning.
The School Principal chose to pass the query to the Department of Education and Training District Office, which eventually responded by denying that any unsafe operation had taken place, and claiming that the inspection by Worksafe had found only minor operator error, which had been corrected. The reality was that Worksafe had found the operator in breach of the relevant legislation and had issued an improvement notice on the machine. The truck canopy had been found inadequate to catch the chips generated by the machine, resulting in them being projected past the truck tray and scattering all over the road.
The first response of the School and the Department was not, how could this have happened, and how can it be prevented from happening again? It was to deny that any problem had arisen, even to the motorist whose vehicle had been struck, who had witnessed the event first hand. They also claimed that it was the responsibility of the operator to conduct the contract in a safe manner, and was therefore not the responsibility of the School or the Department, despite the fact that the tender was let by another government department on behalf of the School, and the operation was being conducted in and immediately adjacent to the school during school hours. This behaviour appears irrational until viewed in the light of instructions in the Risk Management Manual. Then it appears that the risk to the reputation of the school and Department was judged greater than the risk to safety from 5cm wooden missiles being projected at high speed from a chipper onto a public road in a School Zone.
Nor was it simply a matter of the Department being unaware of the outcome of the Worksafe investigation. They chose to misrepresent the outcome of that investigation to give the false impression that no hazard had arisen from the manner in which the chipper was operated. In doing so they either negligently or willfully failed to acknowledge the work order which had been issued, and instead claimed to the motorist that it was merely a case of operator error. The only reasonable explanation for these falsehoods was the intention to deny any wrongdoing on the part of the contractor, and consequently any failing on the part of the Department to supervise the conduct of the work. They were foiled in this subterfuge by the prompt action of Worksafe in attending the worksite after receiving the motorist’ complaint, and the fact that they documented their findings in the form of a work order. Details of the workorder were transmitted to the School before the misrepresentations were made by the Departments regional office.
The willingness of the Department of Education and Training to misinform a member of the public in this fashion, by denying the proven and verifiable facts of the situation also implies that the Department may remain in denial that their systems for recruiting and supervising work at schools need review. Their willingness to claim in correspondence with the motorist that responsibility for the safety of the operation rested entirely with the tree servicing contractor also suggests that they are not fully aware of the legal implications of their duty of care, both to the students and to the public. Instead, they suggested that the tender process by which contractors are “accredited” is in itself a safety procedure guaranteeing the competence of operators employed through that process. But as long as the Department remains unwilling or unable to feed back into that selection process any subsequent unsatisfactory conduct or performance by accredited contractors, there is no reason to assume that someone operating in a dangerous manner at one school might not be hired to conduct similar work at another, particularly if their adverse conduct is denied by the first school.
A disturbing feature of this example is not that the machine required modification, but that the operator was incapable of recognizing the hazard he was creating by operating the machine in that fashion, and despite being accredited to operate large and dangerous machinery in and near school premises. The other disturbing feature was that the Department in this instance was content to rely on this process of “accreditation” to ensure that the contractor conducted the work in a safe manner.
The fact that the Department does not distinguish risk assessment for the purposes of safety and risk assessment for the purposes of public relations fallout is a serious concern to anyone interested in natural justice and the well-being of children in the care of the Department of Education. The potential for the purposes of both to be in conflict is clearly illustrated in the case of the chipping machine accident, and doubtless played a role in how the Department of Education dealt with the dumping of asbestos and live ammunition at the same school. Regrettably, in both these instances, the Department appears to have prioritized the risk to public relations over any safety concerns, and dealt with each hazard accordingly. The real risks to health and safety then became a secondary issue.
posted by kwoll @ 8:32 AM
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