At West Lothian council, we introduced a personal health and safety training course to educate our front-line workers about the possible dangers they could face and how to deal with them.
We felt this was necessary because it’s important that people who deal with the public, such as housing and tenancy officers, feel confident when they are out and about doing their work.
The idea was inspired by a conference I attended on personal health and safety. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust was distributing information that I found particularly relevant; it made me realise that it would be useful to bring someone in to speak to our staff about what they can do to protect themselves and methods they could use to diffuse potentially violent situations.
The course began with an introduction to the different forms violence and aggression can take. It outlined what violence is and highlighted the fact that forms of attack are not just physical. People can be verbally attacked as well.
It looked at the legal framework around self defence and how workers can try to calm aggressors down by talking to them.
We ran the course repeatedly over a period of six to seven months, with 14 places available each time for people from all our “high risk” groups – people who are more likely to be attacked during their job.
The feedback we got from staff indicated that they appreciated the course and found it very useful.
As a result, we also started refresher courses for people so they don’t lose the knowledge they have gained.
The cost was about £600, which came out of the council’s training budget. Although this might seem like a lot, it was worth it.
We also found that having these courses helped aid team work because everyone was working towards one goal – to be as safe as possible in their work.
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
Caroline Herscell, health and safety manager at West Lothian council, talked to Mahua Chatterjee
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