Health and Safety / Risk Management
Physical intervention training and competence. Procedure and guidelines
| Title: Physical Intervention Training and Competence Procedure and Guidelines (Addendum to the Use of Physical Interventions Policy) Policy reference no: To be allocated Unit responsible for updating: Health and Safety Team, Social Services Policy authorised by: SMG Committee / SMG minute reference no: |
|---|
- Principles
- Part one - Training for learning disability services
- Part two - Training for adult services
- Part three - Childrens' services including residential
- Recruitment process - residential services
- Appointment - residential services
- During employment
- Training in physical interventions - childrens' residential homes
- Training in physical interventions - childrens' community based workers
- Other situations relevant for physical intervention training
- Process for residential staff not competent in physical intervention refresher
- Forms for assessment of training - childrens' residential services
- Training of staff for childrens' homes, including relief staff
- Residential services - staff information
- Other contractual obligations
Principles
These guidelines are written with the following principles in mind:
- Where staff are employed in a role which may require physical intervention with clients, it is essential that they are fully aware of this at the outset of their employment.
- Devon County Council has a duty to ensure that where physical intervention is carried out, it is with minimum risk to both staff and clients. There is a need, therefore, to ensure staff are physically fit to undertake Physical Intervention, and are fully trained in doing so.
- For staff working children’s homes only: if, during the course of their employment, a member of staff becomes unable to undertake Physical Intervention, every effort will be made to safeguard their ongoing employment status, or to re-deploy that person, using the process outlined in section three of this document. Ultimately, however, this may not be possible in all cases.
- This guidance is to be implemented in conjunction with the Policy document ‘Use of Physical Interventions (including children)’.
This document is divided into three parts, for each of the client and staff groups to which it can apply, as follows:
- Part 1 - Learning Disability. This applies to adult learning disability services and the Joint Agency team for children with special needs.
- Part 2 - Adult services, for example, elderly residential homes.
- Part 3 - Children’s services, and other applications - for all staff working in children’s residential services who may be required to undertake physical interventions on service users, and for staff working with children in the community who may need restraint for duty of care and safety reasons. This provides the bulk of this policy, and outlines recruitment and training requirements for competency, particularly for children’s residential services, that will not apply to the services outlined above. It also includes brief guidelines for working with children in the community, and foster care.
