risk assessments for nanny

[victoriagirl]

Our nanny starts in January. Should I have done a load of risk assessments for her by then- eg. lifting the buggy out of the car etc- and if so, what should I risk assess?

i have never had a risk assessment done for me

Is she pregnant? If not, it wouldn't occur to me to do a risk assessment. I would just think if I can do it she can do it.

have never had one done for me or done one myself

thats the delight of being a nanny... we can all get on with our daily lives without loads of beuracracy getting in our way!

Thanks for your replies. That's great! I am just so used to risk assessing everything at work, I kind of assumed I would have to at home.

if she was doing an NVQ she'd have to do risk assessments - I have to do them!

"thats the delight of being a nanny... we can all get on with our daily lives without loads of beuracracy getting in our way!"

• not quite!

It would be good practice for an employer to carry out a risk assessment. There are various risks in a family home that should be identified, even if there isn't much that can be done. You don't have to do one, and your nanny may do an informal one from time to time as it is - for example alerting you to your babies new skill of climbing the stairs, so the need for stair-gates - broken items and other various hazards (generally more a hazard to the child, rather than the nanny).
As a nanny I've been on a Manual Handling course - not that helpful really, but does remind you how to stand, to bend your knees, etc when lifting heavy objects. Advising your nanny of the risks of incorrectly lifting is something you may well want to do, if you think/know that the nanny is not lifting things correctly - you don't want your nanny to have lots of time off due to bad back.

i did my NVQ3 and didnt have to do any risk assessments

that would have been 5 years ago though

When I employed my first nanny I 'risk assessed' her working environment (ie. my house), I guess because I do it all the time at work. I didn't make notes or fill in forms, I created a page in the 'nanny book' with emergency instructions, eg. where the main fuse is, where the stop cock is, where the fire blanket/fire extinguisher is.
I also made sure that we had things like oven gloves with no holes in and that toy crates weren't stacked precariously on high shelves.
Things like lifting are hard to assess without standing over the person doing the job - I would rely on nanny telling me that she found it difficult to lift whatever it was, and then trying to find a way around it.