The Health and Safety Group Reviews

Excellent practical training

Good

While there were good refreshments, the room was small for the number of candidates and even smaller when a group joined for the afternoon session. It was hot, stuffy, and quite uncomfortable. I felt we were crammed into a small space. In my opinion, the quality of the teaching wasn't as good as it was last year. I felt the tutor was trying his hardest, but for me, it just didn't work. On this year's experience, I shall look around for another provider for next year. The DeFib training apparatus wasn't working properly, and there was time wasted while the trainer had to make a phone call to access the BVM.

It felt very disorganised and all over the place

The training was good with a good lecture

Good one

Training started really late.

It was interesting and brief

I'm sorry to say that the overall quality of the session was poor. Too many negative and disparaging comments made by the facilitator and some participants about carers, families, trans patients, women, autistic people, police, social workers, local psychiatric wards, A&E staff, including 'we don't trust them', 'they haven't got a clue', 'they switch off their phones at the weekend, they don't want to know', 'the UK, it's more like a zoo'. Totally unacceptable comments made that suggested that a a trans patient used their identity to get staff sacked and that a 14 year-old may have had some responsibility for the abuse that they suffered. A thoughtless joke was made about taking medication and 'self-medicating with Clozapine '. As an autistic person who takes daily medication to keep well, I was very offended by such comments. Although the Public Health Model shows Tertiary Intervention as the final stage, insufficient time was given to the primary and secondary stages. Many slides were missed altogether and no opportunities were given to discuss and practice the de-escalation strategies. The Take 90 slide was wrong and therefore dangerous, as it states that 'scientific evidence shows that it takes just 90 seconds for the neurotransmitters that cause anger to be flushed out of our systems.' Other slides have spelling mistakes on them. The order of the slides was disjointed and poorly ordered. Person-centred approach, trauma informed care, PTSD, active listening etc should have formed the basis of Stage One prevention, but were instead scattered through the presentation with no coherence or value given to these vital preventative approaches. Overall, the training gave me the messages that perpetuated the negative attitude towards people with mental health illnesses, made light of traumatic events through anecdotes shared unkindly, with some of the participants laughing at the traumas being talked about. I did raise my concerns with the facilitator during the first break and things improved a little but some of the above issues continued.

Excellent