PURPOSE

A zero-tolerance policy towards violence and aggression is expected at Building Blocks Therapy. No member of staff should be subjected to violent, threatening and abusive behaviour. Building Blocks Therapy employees have the right to work and carry out their duties in an environment free from violence, threatening or abusive behaviour.

This policy help managers and employees in managing and minimising risk for any event where they may face unacceptable behaviours, including violent, aggressive or abusive behaviour. This could be when co working with others or when working alone. All employees have the right to be treated with consideration, dignity and respect and all employees should be aware of their responsibilities for health and safety.

The purpose of this policy is to inform our staff of the measures in place to manage incidents of violent, threatening or abusive behaviour. It seeks to ensure risks associated with violent, threatening and abusive behaviour are managed through:

  • risk assessment and the identification and implementation of suitable controls
  • training for all relevant employees
  • procedures to reduce the likelihood of our employees being in a vulnerable position.

The strategy and principles of this policy are to:

  • identify potential risks
  • control and manage those risks, where possible
  • inform and involve employees on the risks and the controls in place
  • hold to account those who behave in a violent, threatening or abusive way towards our staff.

SCOPE

This policy and procedure apply to all Building Blocks Therapy employees and volunteers.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

  • We have a duty of care for all our employees, including employees who are working alone or out with an office.
  • We believe that all correspondents and complainants have the right to be heard, understood and respected. We also believe that our staff have the same rights.
  • We value our employees and volunteers and we will not tolerate any form of violent, threatening or aggressive behaviour towards them.
  • All our employees are required to treat each other with dignity and respect by acting in accordance with our values, as outlined below:
    • Fairness: we will act fairly, be transparent and treat people equally
    • Respect: we will be respectful in all what we do
    • Person-centred: we will put people at the heart of everything we do
    • Integrity: we will be impartial and act to improve care for the clients we see
    • Efficiency: we will provide the best possible quality and public value from our work.
  • We will encourage all staff to report accidents and incidents.
  • We will address all incidents reported internally and where there is a serious threat or action, we will report the incident to the appropriate authorities.
  • All employees have a responsibility for their own health and safety.

DEFINITIONS

A violent or aggressive incident is:

‘Any incident, in which a person is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work. This can include verbal abuse or threats as well as physical attacks.’

Incident is defined as: ‘An unwanted, unplanned event that has the potential to cause harm/injury.’
Examples of unacceptable behaviour are summarised below:

  • Violence can be physical, or non- physical including threats, abusive behaviour and language (verbal and written), escalating agitation and intimidating body language.
  • Unreasonable demands – a demand becomes unreasonable when it impacts substantially on our work. Examples of this may include, repeatedly demanding responses within an unreasonable timescale or insisting on seeing or speaking to a particular member of staff when that is not possible or appropriate.
  • Unreasonable levels of contact – volume and duration of contact with the Building Blocks Therapy Employee by an individual that causes problems for the employee. This can occur over a short period, for example, a number of calls in one day or one hour.
  • Unreasonable use of processes – for example, the complaints process, where someone uses the complaints procedure to challenge professional judgments of our staff or where they use it repeatedly to raise the same issues that we have already investigated.

MONITORING AND REVIEWING

The Director of Building Blocks Therapy responsible for monitoring and implementing this policy.
We will review this policy annually and make amendments as appropriate.