Physical Intervention Courses Northern Ireland
Physical Intervention Courses: When is it needed?
We at Quell receive enquires every week for our tailored courses in respect of Personal Safety, Lone Working or Conflict Management and after a discussion with one of the Quell team they do ask if we feel they may need a physical skill as well to help staff react if confronted with a physical threat.
Physical Intervention Courses is a skill that does get mixed up with other physical skills, inclusive of being branded with different types of methods of using force over force. We don’t want to get mixed up with the politics or the arguments about what is best e.g. force or non use of force, as we as a training organisation only use skills which are medically and legally proven to resolve an issue.
However getting back to the main question? It is very easy for us to turn round to anyone who calls us and advise “yes we do recommend your staff should have physical intervention training”, and you know that it will cover you and your staff against everything that is thrown at them. But realistically training certain staff in physical intervention is not always the answer, as would they really need it? And if you just give staff a certain skill at times they will revert straight to that skill without using their conflict management training skills first.
Apart from identifying the risk and then thinking of putting physical intervention courses in place, we would ask a very important question? “Do you hold guidance on staff touching members of the public” because we have found from our experience if you don’t have that old phrase of an umbrella if it’s raining, then if an incident does happen to a member of staff and you are not covered you will get wet.
Trust me when I say that dealing with physical intervention courses is a minefield and caution is advised. For more information and to be navigated through the field, so as to identify your needs please contact us at Quell.