Moving and Handling

Crossroads has 30 year’s experience of supporting and empowering carers. Our experience at both national and local level indicates that training needs to be specific to the needs of individual carers and where possible delivered in the carer’s own home.

The three Birmingham Crossroads schemes committed themselves to working together to address this issue. Discussion took place with the User Involvement and Carer’s Unit and a formal proposal for funding was submitted in December 2000.

Many carers have health problems resulting from their caring responsibilities. Research carried out by the Carers Support Initiative, Your Health, Who Cares? report of June 2001, found that over 50% of the carers who responded to the survey indicated that back pain was a health issue that affected them.

The proposal was to provide home–based, individually tailored packages of Moving and Handling training for carers. This ensured that carers who previously might have been unable to take up training opportunities due to their caring commitments would be able to access training. It also ensured that training on use of equipment would take place on the service user’s own piece of equipment and was relevant to the space constraints and layout of individual homes.

Crossroads was also aware that many carers had not received training on basic First Aid. Negotiations with St John’s Ambulance led to a franchise arrangement with Crossroads, enabling certificated training to be delivered to carers in their own home.

A grant of £30,000 from the Carers Strategy funding enabled the project to come to fruition. A steering group was set up with representatives from Crossroads and the User and Carer Involvement Unit, the Commissioning Officer for Children’s Services, the Manager of the Centre for Independent Living, a Carers Support Worker and the Birmingham Carers’ Advocacy Manager. The group met (and continues to meet) on a bi-monthly basis to set targets for the project and review progress. The project started in October 2001 with two trainers.

Due to demand for the service additional trainers were recruited to the team. It was agreed that a part time Project Manager should be appointed to oversee the work of the whole team, ensure standardisation of training delivered, promote the service more widely and provide ongoing supervision and support to the trainers. In November 2003, June Niner took on the role of Project Manager for the Crossroads Moving and Handling and First Aid Project.

Please click here to download the Crossroads Moving and Handling/First Aid leaflet.

xrdsmovinghandling@tiscali.co.uk

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