OVA prevention strategy
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 129 No 7, 27 September 2024, page 15.
In early August, the Department of Education sent out a draft strategy aimed at providing a high-level approach to address and prevent occupational violence and aggression (OVA) in department workplaces and to support staff, students, and the community.
This follows the Occupation Violence and Aggression Prevention Roundtable held on 7 May, which featured a high level of engagement and a shared commitment to addressing the challenges surrounding OVA in Queensland state schools.
The outcomes of the meeting included:
- the identification of the complexities and challenges of addressing OVA, which were grouped into key areas, opportunities, and actions to address each challenge
- agreement that the OVA strategy and action plan needs to address the following five key areas:
- OVA reporting and system response
- critical incident management and post incident response and support
- OVA education and awareness
- workplace/school design and specialised behaviour support
- OVA resources and tools for all staff and leaders.
With the release of the draft strategy, all departmental staff, unions, associations, and key stakeholders were invited to provide feedback.
The QTU provided extensive and detailed feedback, with concerns including:
- a need for a strong statement focussing on zero tolerance
- a focus on prevention of OVA, not just the response (though this is critical too)
- building a safety culture within the department
- raising of public awareness, a need for a strong consistent DoE position in response to incidents with consequences, and appropriate resourcing so that debriefing, decompressing, and reporting within work hours can occur
- safer school design, including a need for fencing
- an explicit and prescriptive procedure for responses to OVA incidents
- DoE reporting systems that are fit for purpose, easy to input into, allow people to enter reports from home, and talk to OneSchool
- the need for support and resources for schools so that reports can be responded to, and risks eliminated.
Following the QTU feedback, the Union met with departmental representatives to discuss our concerns. Below is an overview of some of the key points of the discussion.
- The department indicated that there was a substantial amount of work and detail behind the strategy and provided an overview of the work. The department committed to setting up a small working group with representation from the QTU and other stakeholders. The purpose of this working group is to scope out and agree to the implementation phases. It was agreed that beside QTU officers, there would also be representation of school leaders and teachers.
- The department advised that it has started discussions regarding IT systems, but any development may take a while. The QTU advised this was a major issue for us and something that we have been raising for a long time.
- A series of public OVA advertisements will be released shortly in the media. Accompanying the release of the public campaign will be a pack of resources worksites can display with a range of messaging.
- There was a discussion about what constitutes zero tolerance with regards to OVA. The QTU provided an overview of our Recognise, Respond, Report campaign regarding OVA.
- There was discussion of the need to look at risk assessments that focus on the worksite (i.e. not student centred) and consider psychosocial hazards as well as physical hazards.
The QTU will continue to keep members updated about this critical issue – as work should never hurt!