Helping to Keep Your Child Safe
Gave Me a Headache....
I was delivering a Pediatric first aid course this week at a
local nursery school and was asked an interesting question…. how long do you
need to keep accident records for?
Completely confident in my knowledge, I piped up, ‘Five
years!’
Looking around the circle, I could see frowns and everyone
seemed to go quiet, so I asked the group, ‘How long do you think it is?’
There were a number of replies ranging from 5 years to
indefinitely. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, imagine the storage you would need if
you had to have hard copies of every accident that had ever happened within an
organisation!’
I pledged to the group that I would find the answer and let
them all know in the session next week.
The next morning I arrived at work thinking that the
information that I needed would be readily available. This was not the case. An
hour later and I was still searching for a definitive answer, maybe this was
going to take longer than I thought.
Various organisations have differing opinions. Some say 5
years, some 10 and I even found one that said 1 year so I continued my search
and tried to find a legal answer to the question. I turned to the good old HSE
to help me find the answer I was looking for.
I could find out all there was to know about making records
and reporting accidents but nothing about how long these records must be
retained. Eventually, (after changing my search parameters several times) I
found a government leaflet called, ‘Guidance on First Aid for Schools.’
This stated that: ‘Employers with 10 or more employees must
keep readily accessible accident records, either in written or electronic form.
These records must be kept for a minimum of 3 years.’
But this is intended for employees rather than students. I
continued my search. This time, checking out the OFSTED regulations.
Although you might imagine that this policy is available and
easily found, again, I was surprised how long it took me to find out any
information at all. I could find out lots about what should be retained and
reported but hardly anything about time scales. It seems that different organisations
have different regulations.
At last I found a document from the Records Management Society of Great Britain entitled ‘Retention
Guidelines for Schools’.
www.plymouth.gov.uk/rms_retention_guidelines.doc
It is apparent from the document that information
should be retained for different periods of time depending on the information.
This document states that accidents to adults must
be retained for 7 years after the date of the accident and for children, their
date of birth plus 25 years. This comes from the Statutory Provision:
·
Social Security
(Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979 Regulation 25.
·
Social Security
Administration Act 1992 Section 8.
·
Limitation Act
1980
So now we all know! But I do
wonder why it was so difficult for me to find out this information.
Maybe no
one wants to take overall responsibility for this.
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