In Loco Parentis

In loco parentis is Latin for ‘in the place of a parent’

In loco parentis refers to the authority delegated by parents to another responsible adult for example a teacher.

The person that is responsible is expected to apply the same standard of care as would a reasonable parent would. The standard of care may vary because of activity, age and maturity. However, the coach or teacher must assume certain responsibilities and recognise that both the legal and moral obligations rest upon them in every aspect of the activity. By law, the adult must behave as any "reasonable" parent would. http://learn.forskills.co.uk/resource/lfe/Level3/L3AssessingRiskInSport/L3AssessingRiskInSport_02Mod/L3AssessingRiskInSport_03.htm

How is loco parentis related to our sports centre?

Positive: if a child gets hurt during football the coach stops the lesson and then takes the child to hospital the coach is then acting as a parent.

Negative: an example of this is if the coach constantly kicks the ball at one child for the whole session.

Statutory law

What it statutory law?

Statutory law is all the written laws making it illegal to not following them, this legal factor is in place to make sure every business follows the laws that cover health and safety of employees.

How does statutory law related to health and safety?

The health and safety at work act was put in place to make people safer at work. Statutory law covers the whole legal side of the law enforcing everyone to follow these laws otherwise they will be taken to court.

How does statutory law relate to our sports centre?

In our sports centre if they haven’t checked the levels of chlorine that’s been put into the swimming pool and someone goes into the pool and the levels of chlorine are too high it can cause their skin to burn their skin to burn, under statutory law the sport centre will can be sued for negligence, and the lack in duty of care, and if it was a Swimming lesson it will be bad Loco Parentis.

Duty of care

All employee’s and employers have a duty of care towards other people in the work place or when on a trip, wherever there is a potential risk/danger.

Duty of care is a legal obligation for people that are coaches or teachers, because if they take a group of students they to take care of them. The teachers and coaches have a legal obligation to get rid of avoid any risks so everyone can be safe. Thanks to the duty of care health and safety is able to be kept properly because if the person/coach doesn’t follow the duty of care they could get sued.

Duty of care in our sports centre;

For example if we were running a basketball lesson in the sports hall, and before the lesson started it was raining and the maintenance team didn’t dry the sports hall properly and one of the student slips and hurts themselves coach could be sued for negligence because he/she didn’t check if the surface was safe to play on. The coach would get sued because he has a duty of care to make sure the children will be playing in a safe environment.

Higher Duty of Care

Coaches or teachers must be prepared for children to be less able that adults would be in a similar situation that they are in. this has to be taken into consideration even more than it already should be because the child may have learning disabilities or another disability, this could put them in even more danger so the coach or teacher has to be extra careful.

For example coaches should be aware of the medical conditions that anyone in their class has, the coach must be prepared of the medical condition is affected during the session for example if one of the students has asthma and they have an asthma attack the coach should get their asthma inhaler so the student can use it.

Case law

Case law is a set of laws which are used to explain the verdict in a case. It is a ruling made by a judge based on previous rulings and interpretations of the case by making a subsequent ruling.

How case law links with health and safety.

-         provide a written health and safety policy

-         make risk assessments to employees, customers and trading partners, or anyone that may be affected by the activities

-         arrange a meeting for effective planning to maintain control of the situation

-         make sure everyone has access to health and safety advice

-         tell employees about the risks at work and how you are going to prevent them

a case can be brought up by two companies if they fail to apply these rules, the judge will come up with different views and ideas for a verdict. If any of the companies are found guilty they will be fined and could even be shut down.

Negligence

Negligence is about leaving people on there own to do something when they are not authorized to do so or they can’t do it because of their ability. Negligence is failure to take reasonable care to avoid injury or injury to another person.

Negligence is related to health and safety because if one of the students is not being taken care of properly then the manager of the company can be held responsible.

For example if an employer is being negligent to one of the clients and they are doing something that they can get injured from.

Sporting example

If a client was doing weights and they where under a personal trainers instructions, the personal trainer has to make sure that they do not give the client any exercise they can’t do. But if they do give them an exercise they have never done before the trainer

The sports centre is in charge of making sure that clients are not treated with negligence, they should ensure that the person they are dealing with has knowledge of how to use the weights.