All Wales Manual Handling Passport Scheme

What is the Passport Scheme?

The overall aim of the passport scheme is to ensure that Manual Handling standards within Wales are consistent across the country. A passport scheme qualification should be recognized by every company that asks for a Manual Handling qualification. Everyone teaches by the same standard, and so every company will recognize the qualification as acceptable and know what was involved.

What does the course entail?

That depends on your work situation. The Passport scheme is divided into several units, and depending on your staff’s roles within their work, you can choose how many units that they study. So, if a staff member regularly lifts boxes and objects in an office, but is never in contact with patients or manual handling equipment, you can leave that unit out and focus on basic manoeuvres and risk assessment. The certificate will indicate which units have been completed by the student.

There are six ‘units’ in the scheme, as follows:

Module A: Introduction
Module B: Inanimate loads
Module C: Sitting, standing and walking
Module D: Bed Mobility
Module E: Lateral Transfers
Module F: Hoists & Slings

As you can see the vast majority of the scheme is practical in nature, and deals mostly with patient transfers and support.

The course is also useful to teach your staff how to assess risks in the workplace on a daily basis, recognizing and reporting risks as they come across them. All companies have many different policies to protect their staff against injury in the workplace, but one of the most important things to remember is that as long as tasks are carried out with care and common sense, along with approved manoeuvres, injury can be easily avoided.

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