How can I qualify as a Manual Handling Trainer?

How do I qualify as a Manual Handling Trainer? The qualifications required to teach accredited manual handling awards and become a manual handling instructor have changed over the last couple of years. You can no longer teach accredited manual handling awards with just a manual handling trainer award, as this will not be accepted by any of the UK awarding bodies. Teaching Qualification First and foremost if you want to be a trainer you will need to have an entry-level teaching qualification. The PDLSG – Planning and Delivering Learning Sessions to Groups Award or the ETA – Level 3 Award in Education and Training qualification gives the teaching award accepted by all awarding bodies. This course is nationally accredited and by its conclusion will allow the successful candidate to teach any subject they have experience in. Manual Handling Qualification Ok, so you now have a teaching qualification either PDLSG or ETA that proves your competence as a trainer. What’s next is to match it up with some relevant experience. The easiest way to do this is to obtain the Level 3 Health and Safety for Supervisors award or Nebosh, but also you can do a CPD manual handling award. Holding the teaching qualification and current experience will allow you to teach the following courses: Manual Handling Training Manual Handling Level 2 Award It’s best to also complete at least a half-day manual handling objects course before you attend the manual handling trainer CPD award. Insurance Trainers will require public liability insurance to gain an approval from awarding bodies but also to protect them in case a member of the public blames you for causing damage or injury. Also on insurance a trainer is advised to take out professional indemnity insurance in case a member of your class accuses you of making a mistake, which they then taught and caused injury. Both of these insurances are around £120 to £140 per year. Equipment In manual handling you don’t really need much specialist equipment, its more training equipment you require. The below list of equipment is everything you will need: Manual Handling PowerPoint (some companies will give this free on trainer courses, otherwise it can cost up to £90 ) Lifting aids such as spinal model if required can be found on eBay Projector for Powerpoint presentations Manual Handling Trainer Courses with Teaching Award If you don’t already have a teaching award such as PDLSG or the Education and Training Award, then you can attend courses with Abertay International Training, IOSH or City & Guilds etc. For example courses from Abertay provide everything you need just click the link below to become a Manual Handling Trainer with includes the PDLSG teaching award Teaching Qualification Experience or Qualification in Manual Handling Insurance as stated above Equipment as listed above Accredited Manual Handling Certifications Now that you have followed the above and are now qualified as a Manual Handling Trainer, how do you gain accredited certification. IOSH plus City & Guilds Manual Handling Trainer Courses are great awards, as they are very good courses that cover what you need to know in order to become a Manual Handling Trainer. Both IOSH and City & Guilds have a disadvantage however in the certification from them, will not allow you to gain accredited certification from awarding bodies without an additional separate teaching/assessing award. The Abertay or Nuco courses will however as they include a separate teaching award as part of the course and included in the costs. Once you have all the above, you then need to apply to one of the awarding bodies to apply to become an approved centre so that you can gain accredited manual handling certifications for the candidates you then teach. There are many awarding bodies out there but one of the most reasonable for costs is SafeCert Awards. They cost 295 for centre approval with manual handling certification at around 5 pounds each. There are also Highfield for centre approval 450 plus vat and certification costs at at around 8 pounds. With awarding bodies all will require an annual spend and therefore cost you around 250 to 350 per year, but we included SafeCert as there is no annual spend requirement. Before selecting your awarding body do your research, you can search for awarding bodies for manual handling on google for more information.

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