Manual Handling Training
Statutory moving and handling training with specialist clinical input, covering everyday low-risk handling through to highly complex clients. Delivered on-site across South East London and Kent.
Thrive provides moving and handling training for staff in care, education, and community settings. Training meets statutory requirements and includes specialist input in neurological conditions, dementia, learning disability, autism and sensory processing differences, and complex physical needs.
Training is created and quality assured by our HCPC clinical leads who hold Ofqual-regulated (RQF) qualifications in People Moving and Handling and actively work in healthcare, education and social care settings. Tailored training can be made in the case of a setting having high numbers of complex clients. Every delegate receives a Thrive attendance certificate and a signed individual competency record on the day of training.
Four levels of support
Awareness
The mandatory minimum required by law, applicable to all staff.
People handling
Practical technique for the transfers staff perform in your setting, using your equipment and environment.
Complex and bespoke handling
Clinically led input on residents with complex needs, including de-escalation, co-regulation, and when not to hoist.
Individual manual handling plans
For a setting's most complex clients. A physiotherapist visits the setting, assesses the individual, and produces a written handling plan covering safe techniques, staffing ratios, equipment, and any sensory or behavioural adaptations required. Group visits are available where several residents require assessment.
Sensory-informed handling
Training can cover adapting handling for people with sensory, cognitive, and communication differences. Topics include areas such as:
Topics such as whether a move is necessary and whether it can wait, recognising pain, fear, and delirium as causes of resistance, and the use of familiar staff, comfort objects, timing, and adjusted equipment.
Topics such as sensory aids in place before handling, consistent touch cues, and supporting the person's own active movement.
Topics such as responding without contradiction, clear single instructions, and when new symptoms need escalation.
Topics such as pre-warning, routine, consistent staff, objects of reference, and co-regulation before a transfer.
Compliance
Thrive training and documentation are mapped to the legal framework for moving and handling, so a booking covers the requirement and the evidence together:
The duty to provide information, instruction, and training for safe working. Met through annual training, induction training for new starters, and specialist sessions.
The duty to assess manual handling risk and reduce it, with assessments that reflect the task, staff member, load, and environment. Where the person being moved has complex needs, generic assessment is not sufficient; Thrive's individual handling plans meet the requirement for person-specific assessment, reviewed as needs change.
Evidenced through training records and the signed individual competency records issued on the day of training.
Evidenced through individual handling plans and written documentation for each complex resident.
The compliance cycle this supports: annual refresher training, induction before new staff move residents, individual competency records, and individual handling plans kept current. These are the records inspectors request and the evidence relied on after an incident.
Current legal developments
Training content is kept current with the law, including the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the 2026 Supreme Court redefinition of deprivation of liberty, and the planned replacement of DoLS with the Liberty Protection Safeguards.
Discuss your setting's needs
Contact us for a quote or to discuss training and individual assessments.
Or email us directly: caresettings@thrivephysiotherapy.org.uk