Background principles of risk prevention

Occupational risk prevention is one of the duties any organisation has when hiring employees to do work that involves risk.

Promotors shall apply the measures that make up the general duty of prevention in accordance with the following general principles:

a) Risk avoidance.

b) Evaluate risks that cannot be avoided.

c) Combat risks at their source.

d) Adapting work to the individual, particularly with regard to the design of workstations, as well as the choice of equipment and work and production methods, with a view, in particular, to reducing monotonous and repetitive work and its effects on health.

e) Take into account the evolution of the technique.

f) Substitute what is dangerous with what entails little or no danger.

g) To plan prevention, seeking a coherent whole that integrates technique, work organization, working conditions, social relations and the influence of environmental factors at work.

h) Adopt measures that put collective protection before individual protection.

i) Give proper instructions to workers.

All of the above measures are expected of promotors. This is the reason the manual of good practices is so focussed on establishing and evaluating best practice protocols for the professionals and volunteers working within the program.

Also it is important to state the following: "The employer shall take into consideration the professional capabilities of the workers in terms of safety and health when entrusting them with tasks."

Specifically, and in order to combat risks at their source, reducing the probability of certain risks materializing, more specifically of psychosocial origin, the therapeutic surfing activity will be aimed at children over 8 years of age with grade 1 autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Limiting the autism spectrum to level 1 (Mild Autism) takes into consideration this point, reducing the training needs of the workers (surf instructors) to be able to safely carry out the therapeutic surfing activity. Users with ASD G1 need moderate assistance to function appropriately in social situations, to detect and correctly interpret nonverbal language cues,