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Welcome to Assessing Risk

• Presenter: Steven Santos

• Goals: To help you assess actual risks

• Techniques: Basic Risk Assessment

Assessing Risk

“But it’s perfectly safe, I do it all the time!”… “No, you can’t do that here, you might get hurt”

The problems:

• As camp directors, its our job to keep things safe for every kid

• We are often not equipped to deal with kids who have additional training

• We are not equipped to assess a child’s additional training or needs

So what?

• With the rise of specialty camps and after school programs, we are seeing more and more kids with specialized training

• Many times, kids as young as 12 and 13 can have reached pre-profesional and professional levels of training

• If we don’t accommodate kids with additional training, we will loose them.

But kids claim training they don’t have all the time!

• Many kids claim training they want, but don’t have (fake it till you make it)

• Many kids claim more advanced training than they actually have

Is a cartwheel safe to do?

• Assume your staff can’t do a cartwheel, and do not have any training in how to teach them. Is it safe to allow a camper to do one?

• Why? What can go wrong?

Conducting a Risk Assessment

• Risk Assessments will help you determine what a kid actually knows

• Risk Assessments will help you figure out what you can do safely

• Risk Assessments will help you control your liability

What is a Risk Assessment?A Risk Assessment is an objective and realistic look at the liability risks associated with what you do.

In other words, exactly what from your activity could realistically cause an injury to someone, or cause damage to property?

The risk assessment defines the known risks for each activity and then assigns a numerical likelihood and severity to each risk. Some forms also define what can be done to mitigate those risks.

Who uses Risk Assessments?“Suits” including those in risk management and insurance companies use RA’s to help define the risk, and assess coverage options.

Admin folks, including managers, directors, club boards and others use RA’s to help ensure their program is safe, especially when adding new skills

Teachers use RA’s to help make sure they are using the safest approaches to teaching a skill.

Who uses Risk Assessments (2)

Students should use the Risk Assessment to help themselves figure out what to watch for before trying a new and potentially dangerous skill

Performers should use the Risk Assessment to (1) help themselves figure out what to watch for before trying a new and potentially dangerous skill, (2) figure out if a hard or difficult skill is worth performing and (3) help communicate the actual risks of the show to others

Forms of the Risk Assessment

Column Format, also known as Chart Format refers to a method of writing RA’s where you have columns for what you are looking at, and then rows for each risk. There are literally hundreds of different variants on the chart form, but all RA’s start in chart form.Policy Format is when you take your chart form, and convert each row into a specific policy statement for your organization. Policy format is often harder to change than chart form, but is often required by various “suits”

Developing a Risk Assessment

– Planning your Risk Assessment– Key Terms– The 0 – 5 scales– What do you include, what don’t you include: Filling in

your initial chart– A look at calculating the overall risk factors (the math)– Assigning colors: green, blue, yellow, orange and red– Converting to Policy Format

Planning your Risk Assessment

When planning your Risk Assessment, you want to start by separating out your various risks into logical categories. This is most commonly done along skill lines, such as juggling, stiltwalking, etc.

For each category of risk, we will then have topics for Environment, Activity, Equipment, Classroom / Stage, and Other.

Sample Stiltwalking RA

Key Terms:Hazard: A source of potential harm or a situation with a potential to cause loss. Who: Defines who the hazard is expected to effect.Likelihood: A measurement of how often and probable an event might occur. Used as a qualitative description of probability or frequency. Severity: If an adverse event does take place, how severe are the expected consequences? Safeguard: The steps we take to minimize or remove the hazardRisk Factor: The product of the severity X the likelihood of a given risk.

The 0 – 5 Scales

Likelihood 0 Extremely Unlikely1 Unlikely2 Possible3 Likely4 Very Likely5 Will Happen

Severity0 Extremely Insignificant1 Insignificant2 Minor3 Moderate4 Major 5 Catastrophic

What to include, and what not to include in your Risk Assessment

• DO include anything that has been a problem in the past.

• DO include anything that you expect to be a problem.

• DO include any specific hazards others have raised.

• DO NOT include anything with a score of 0

Sample Stiltwalking RA

Calculating the overall risk factors

When calculating out the risk factor for a given activity, first we average the likelihoods and severities and then we multiply the resulting averages to give us our risk factor.

Initial Risk Factor4/34/34/32/32/33/3

Average:

3.17 / 3

Total Risk Factor

9.5

Resulting Risk Factor2/23/11/31/11/11/2

Average:

1.5 / 1.67

Total Risk Factor

2.5

Sample Stiltwalking RA

Standard Color Codes

• Green 01 - 03 – Extremely Insignificant risk

• Blue 03 - 04 – Insignificant risk• Yellow 04 - 06 – Minor risk• Orange 06 – 08 – Miner-Moderate risk• Red 08 – 10 – Moderate risk• Black 10 - 16 – High Risk

It’s Your Turn!