SEXUAL HARRASSMENT

Please find attached an important alert on the issue of sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment towards both staff and clients can include conduct such as:

• · inappropriate staring, leering, or loitering
• · unwelcome touching
• · suggestive comments or jokes, insults or taunts based on sex, or sexual gestures
• · using suggestive or sexualised nicknames for a person
• · persistent unwanted invitations to go out on dates
• · intrusive questions or comments about a person’s private life or body
• · unnecessary familiarity, such as deliberately brushing up against a person
• · displaying material of a sexual nature in the workplace
• · communicating sexually explicit material in person or through phone calls, online interaction, email, social media, or text messages.

When providing personal care for clients that requires touching it must be done in an acceptable, dignified, respectful, and non-sexual manner.

If support workers are engaged in the personal care of clients and touch each other, in the course of this work, it should be in an acceptable, dignified, respectful, and non-sexual manner.

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Neal Rodwell — General Manager — North West Support Services — 0418 140 000