In your role as a support worker, you must comply with a number of legal frameworks and ensure that you are following ethical guidelines when working with clients.

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The Australian legal system establishes the rights of individuals to have control and power in their own lives and makes sure these rights are enforced by law.

Legislation, standards and codes of conduct in your industry provide minimum requirements for how you and others in the community must meet human rights and social justice principles in your work. These documents should always be available for you to learn about and refer to in your workplace. You can also find many of them online.

Acts of legislation are laws created by government that must be followed. In aged care and disability fields, there are laws that are designed to ensure the legal rights of vulnerable people are upheld and that breaches in rights are reported and managed.

Some legislation, such as the Aged Care Act 1997 and the Disability Act 2006, are written primarily for staff and managers who work in these industries. They outline and enforce certain human rights and responsibilities related to support workplaces such as:

• legislation that restricts the use of restrictive practices that limit the person’s freedom
• requirements for providing information and gaining consent from clients or residents before providing a service
• legislation related to preventing and managing suspected abuse or neglect
• legal requirements for how complaints are managed.

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Let’s take a look at the legislation that you need to be familiar with in your role as a support worker.

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Select the items on the image to reveal some examples of discrimination that may occur in your workplace.

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As well as ensuring that you do not discriminate against your clients, you must also ensure that their privacy is protected at all times.

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Watch ‘Privacy and confidentiality (16)’ and answer the questions as they appear.

Duty of care and dignity of risk

Duty of care is a moral or legal obligation to ensure the safety and wellbeing of other persons.

You have a legal duty of care to the people you support, yourself, other workers and people in the work environment. You follow your duty of care by taking reasonable steps to keep yourself and other people safe.

Community service organisations and workers have a responsibility to provide a duty of care to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people in receipt of their services. Legislative and regulatory obligations underpin an organisation’s policies. These then determine the procedures to guide service delivery, which promotes and enhances the safety and wellbeing of people.

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A duty of care includes individuals and employers anticipating and acting on possible causes of injury and illness that may exist in their work environment or as a result of their actions. A person or employer must do everything they can to remove or minimise the possible cause of harm. A duty of care exists when someone’s actions could reasonably be expected to affect another person.

While aspects of WHS legislation may vary between states and territories, there are common legislative requirements and obligations under the duty of care principle. Everyone in the community services environment has a duty of care for themselves, each other, the people they support and visitors.

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The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) explains workers’ obligations under law.

For example, Sec. 28 – Duties of workers, states:

While at work, a worker must:

• take reasonable care for his or her own health and safety
• take reasonable care that his or her acts or omissions do not adversely affect the health and safety of other persons
• comply, so far as the worker is reasonably able, with any reasonable instruction that is given by the person conducting the business or undertaking to allow the person to comply with this Act
• cooperate with any reasonable policy or procedure of the person conducting the business or undertaking relating to health or safety at the workplace that has been notified to workers.

In the past, our adherence to duty of care has made support workers so concerned about safety that we forgot about the person’s right to make choices that involve some level of risk. With some exceptions, all people have the right to make choices for themselves, even if you don’t agree with that choice, and even if that choice is not written in their plan. This is called dignity of risk.

However, the person’s dignity of risk must be balanced with your duty of care. This means that you have the responsibility to make sure that:

• the person understands the consequences of that choice, such as feeling unwell if they don’t take their medication
• the person is given the right information about that choice, such as talking to their general practitioner (GP) if they have diabetes but do not want to follow the diet that they have been recommended
• the risk that the person is taking doesn’t affect anyone else. for example, the person doesn’t have the right to smoke inside a facility, because it can put others at risk.

Here are some examples of dignity of risk:

• Allowing a person to work out in the garden pruning roses, even if you are worried that they might scratch themselves or fall.
• Allowing a person to wander unrestricted but taking steps to reduce their chance of falling.
• Allowing a person who uses a wheelchair to go shopping alone, even if you worry that they might be an easy target for having their money stolen.

Codes of conduct

A code of conduct is a set of rules that informs employees how to act in a workplace. In services that support older people and people with disabilities, codes of conduct or codes of ethics include the requirement to undertake all work using social justice principles. They outline the need to treat people with respect, fairness and to support their rights to dignity, equality and self-determination.

Your service might have its own code of conduct or code of ethics, or your service might require you to adhere to one of the following:

• Workers in aged care and other community services in some states adhere to the 'National code of conduct for healthcare workers'.
  

• The Australian Community Workers Association provides a 'Code of Ethics and Standards' that can be used for all community service organisations.
  

• The 'National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Code of Conduct' can help you understand the scope of your role, work boundaries and limitations of working for a NDIS funded service.
  

• The Victorian Department of Health provides the 'National code of conduct for healthcare workers '.

Industry standards

In community services, standards are benchmarks or minimum requirements that must be performed in your workplace every day.

Peak government bodies monitor an organisation’s adherence and compliance with the standards set for their industry. If standards are not met, the organisation will not be able to operate and will not receive reimbursement or access to funding to provide services to clients.

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