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The hierarchy of controls at home: why "keep an eye on them" comes last

Every Australian workplace must rank its safety controls from strongest to weakest. Supervision sits near the bottom. Here is the same ladder for a family home.

Every Australian business must manage its risks by working down a ranked list called the hierarchy of controls. The list comes from the model Code of Practice How to manage work health and safety risks, and courts can treat the code as evidence of what a business should know about a hazard. The ladder works just as well in a house with a toddler in it.

Hazard and risk are not the same thing

The code defines a hazard as "a situation or thing that has the potential to harm a person", and risk as "the possibility that harm (death, injury or illness) might occur when exposed to a hazard". The pool is the hazard. The chance that a two-year-old reaches the water, and what happens then, is the risk.

A control is anything that lowers that risk. The hierarchy ranks controls by how well they work when people are tired, busy or distracted, which in a family home is most of the time.

The five levels

The code groups the levels in three tiers, and the United States safety institute, NIOSH, teaches the same five steps.

  1. Eliminate the hazard. The code calls this "the most effective control". At work: do the job at ground level so nobody can fall. At home: tip out the paddling pool, the nappy bucket and the bath straight after use. Bin spare button batteries. Take old medicines back to the chemist.
  2. Substitute something safer. At work: water-based paint instead of solvent. At home: toys and gadgets without button batteries, or with sealed ones; low, broad furniture instead of tall, narrow units; the least toxic cleaner that does the job.
  3. Isolate or engineer. Put a physical barrier between the child and the hazard, or change the hazard with a device. At work: guard rails, machine guards, safety switches. At home: a four-sided pool fence with a self-closing gate, a locked medicine cupboard, furniture strapped to the wall, a stair gate, a tempering valve that holds bathroom hot water at 50°C.
  4. Administrative controls. Rules and routines. At work: procedures, time limits, warning signs. At home: supervision, "drinks to the back of the bench", a named adult watching the water at every party.
  5. Personal protective equipment (PPE). Gear worn by the person at risk. At work: hard hats and gloves. At home: bike helmets, life jackets, oven mitts.

Why supervision ranks so low

Supervision is an administrative control, and the code is blunt about that tier: administrative controls and PPE "are the least effective at minimising risk because they do not control the hazard at the source and rely on human behaviour and supervision". It allows them only as a back-up, a short-term fix, or a last resort.

This is not a criticism of parents. It is a description of people. A phone rings, a sibling cries, someone knocks at the door. Workplaces learned long ago that "be careful" fails on an ordinary day, so the law makes them build barriers first. Homes deserve the same logic.

The evidence from pools shows what happens when the stronger control is missing or broken. A Queensland study of 46 children under 5 who drowned in home pools between 2005 and 2015 found the child got in through a gate propped open in 28.3% of cases, a fence in disrepair in 19.6%, and no fence at all in 13.0%. In each of those cases the barrier was the control that failed, and supervision alone did not make up for it.

Work down the list, one hazard at a time

Pick one hazard tonight and ask the questions in order.

Most hazards end up with more than one control. That is the point: each layer has gaps, and a second layer covers the first one's gaps.

Three quick examples

Our full guide, Run your home like a work site, adds the risk matrix, the Haddon matrix, critical controls and a printable checklist.

Sources