I want to talk about the obligation of employers to their staff and clients.
Into the third year of this pandemic, we are all much more experienced at understanding and managing the risks of COVID-19 to ourselves and those we care about.
Business and service operators are now expected to make choices about how to effectively manage the health and safety of their staff and clients, which is an important milestone in the stepping down of the pandemic response.
Managing the risk of COVID-19 to employees, clients and others is a workplace health and safety obligation for businesses.
Employers can implement any reasonable measure to ensure the health and safety of their staff and clients and to reduce the risk of COVID-19 on their business and workforce. This might include additional protections and infection control measures through local guidelines or policies.
If you are a client of a disability support service, please talk to your service provider bout their local policies and what they can do to respond to your needs and preferences and address risks you may be concerned about.
If you are a service provider, you are responsible for providing for your clients in a safe and competent manner.
Please encourage your staff to respect any reasonable request from a client to take additional infection control measures when interacting with them. For instance, a client may ask a service provider to wear a mask, and I hope that your staff would respect this very reasonable request.
As we learn to live with COVID-19 and its risks, we all need to consider how to act to protect ourselves, those we work with, our loved ones and others in our community.