Legislation Flashcards
The equality act
Illegals for any employer or employee to discriminate against an individual based on: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation.
Covers direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
The mental health act
Relates to the care and wellbeing of people suffering from a recognised mental disorder.
Aims to: allow sufferers to be detained in hospital and have their disorder assessed or treated, provide services to treat or protect people, help people who may harm themselves or others.
Referred by: self, third party, professional or compulsory.
Medical conditions covered: schizophrenia, anorexia, severe depression, bipolar, Alzheimer’s, autism, psychosis.
Human rights act
Right to life, dignity, privacy and family life, fair trial, no discrimination and the prohibition of torture and I human and degrading treatment.
NHS and community care act
Protect individuals with a chronic illness or in need of long term care.
Children’s act
Aims to improve children’s lives and gives the legal underpinning to ‘every child matters: change for children’.
Children should be safe and protected at all times.
Works in partnership with parents.
Children should be kept informed and make decisions about their future.
The child’s race, religion, culture and language must be respected.
Work and families act
Aims to establish a balanced package of rights and responsibilities for both employers and employees.
Aims: allow the mother to extend maternity pay from 6 to 9 months and allow up to a heads leave, give the father a right of up to 26 weeks’ additional paternity leave, provide an enabling power to extend entitlement to 4 weeks’ leave, making it additional and time equivalent to bank holidays.
Data protection act
A legal basis for the handling of information relating to living people.
Creates rights for those who have their data stored, and responsibilities for those who store or collect personal data. The person who has their data processed has the right to: view the data an organisation holds about them, request that incorrect information is correct, require that days is not used in a way that causes damage or distress, require that their days is not used for direct marketing.
Access to health care records act/access to personal files act
All patients have the right to see their own health records, reports, x-Ray’s and electronically stored days.
Both acts give an individual the right to have inaccurate data about themselves corrected.
Personal information about someone else will not be released without that persons consent.
A health professional does not need another health professionals permission to show information recorded by that person.
If a doctor writes a report on a clients health for an insurance company or employer, the client had a right to see this information before it is sent.
To access records: a formal request or informal request.
Health and safety at work act
Provides the legal framework to promote, stimulate and encourage high standards of health and safety in places of work.
Aims: to secure the health, safety and welfare of the care workers, to protect individuals receiving care against risks to health and safety on connection with the activities of persons at work, to control the keeping and prevent unlawful use of dangerous substances.
Carry out regular risk assessments and make sure all equipment is safe. Care workers must be fully trained.
Care workers must: use safety equipment e.g hoists, wheelchairs, sharps disposal boxes. Follow the health and safety policy, be aware of their own safety as well as others.
