I’ve been asked a question by a guy called Rick, and that is basically, ‘How Long Should A Restraint Trainer Refresher Last For?’, so I thought I’d do this short video to answer that question for Rick, and maybe you’d find it useful too!
Hi Rick, None of the publications dictates how long a refresher should be in terms of hours or days.
That would come down to the training needs analysis, risk assessment and lesson planning, which should take into consideration the degree of skill required (low-level, high-level, etc), any upskilling that needs to be added in (due to a change in legislation, information from incident reviews, staff feedback, etc), how different learning preferences would be addressed and the different methods of assessment required.
And having worked as an Expert Witness in this field now for some time, I tend to look at things from a worse case scenario and work backwards and my thoughts would be, if someone was seriously injured or killed in a restraint incident and the organisation had to prove that the training their staff was given was based on a ‘suitable and sufficient’ assessment of risk.
This means that the risk assessment that underpins the training must take into account all of the foreseeable variables.
In one case I was involved with many years ago an agency had to provide evidence that their staff were competent and had received the appropriate initial training and ongoing refresher training.
They provided evidence that a number of staff had received eight hours of refresher training that included training in six subject areas.
The training started at 0930 and ended at 1600, with a 30-minute break in the morning and afternoon and an hour for lunch. So in 4.5 hours of actual training time, the staff had received refresher training in six subject areas, which equated to just 45 minutes per module.
When asked how much time was set aside for formal assessment for each candidate they couldn’t provide any evidence. No risk assessment was forthcoming. All that they had was a policy that said staff should attend one days training every 12 months. You can imagine the outcome.
This is why it is important that all trainers should not only hold a qualification in the subject matter they teach, but also a teaching qualification and also a risk assessment qualification, so that they know how to do what they need to do.
Best Regards
Mark Dawes