How the duty of care contributes to safeguarding individuals

Duty of care helps to maintain standard of care, in line with principles, policies and procedures and codes of practice. It informs us to work according to policies and procedures, codes of practice and national care standard, which is safeguarding individuals, enabling their choices and managing risks. Hence, we are legally obliged to safeguard individual from any kind of harm or abuse as part of duty of care.

It prevents us from delivering care practice that has negative impact on individual’s safety, health and wellbeing. It also restricts to perform any tasks we are not competent to do safely. By knowing duty of care, we will be able to recognise the obligation for action to take in order to protect individual from harm and abuse.

We have a duty of care to report any safeguarding or health and safety issue immediately to appropriate authority (such as Manager, Team Leader). If we do not report or take any action then we would cause harm to service users, ourselves and other team members.

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar