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At Safer Solutions, we specialise in delivering expert training, advisory services, and hands-on support focused on enhancing safety, respect, and wellbeing across healthcare, mental health, education, social care, and security industries

Wondering who could benefit from breakaway training??It is easy to assume breakaway skills are only relevant to clinical...
20/10/2026

Wondering who could benefit from breakaway training??

It is easy to assume breakaway skills are only relevant to clinical teams working in obviously high-risk environments, but in reality, unwanted physical contact can happen across many roles and settings.

Breakaway training may be relevant for staff working in:

- Health and social care

- Supported living

- Mental-health services

- Education

- Community and outreach roles

- Transport

- Retail and hospitality

- Public-facing services

- Lone-working or unpredictable environments

The risk may involve somebody else grabbing a wrist, or clothing, or hair, or preventing a member of staff from moving away safely, and appropriate training can help staff understand how to disengage from unwanted contact while considering personal safety, dignity, and the risk of injury.

But deciding whether your team needs breakaway training should begin with your actual workplace, not a generic list, you should consider:

- What situations have staff previously encountered?

- Are employees working alone or away from immediate support?

- Do they work in confined, public or unpredictable environments?

- Have near misses or concerns been reported?

- Do staff know when to create distance or seek support?

- Would they feel confident responding if unwanted contact occurred?

The purpose is not to make people expect the worst, it is to help them feel better prepared if a difficult situation develops. At my company, Safer Solutions, we provide practical, scenario-based breakaway training shaped around the organisation, it's environment, and the risks it's staff may realistically face.

Would breakaway training help your team feel more prepared? Send me a DM or visit my website to discuss workplace and training requirements.

Lived experience, trauma, recovery and self-awareness.Understanding something professionally and experiencing it persona...
19/10/2026

Lived experience, trauma, recovery and self-awareness.

Understanding something professionally and experiencing it personally can be two very different things.

For me, that became clear on 6 August 2013.

I’d been a prison officer for nearly seven years when an alarm sounded and a call for assistance came from a neighbouring wing. What followed was a cell fire that resulted in a death in custody.

Out of respect for former colleagues and the family of the deceased, I won’t go into the details. It’s something I’ll never forget.

Work seemed to return to normal quickly. There were investigations, interviews and, around three years later, a court case. Although the coroner commended my attempts to save the young man, I felt something remained unresolved.

The advice I heard was familiar: “Chin up.” “It’s part of the job.” “Have a b**r and forget about it.”

So I carried on. I thought I was coping.

Years later, I was waking in the early hours hearing alarms and smelling smoke. I’d repeatedly check the house, but there was nothing there. My anxiety was through the roof, and I struggled to think clearly.

Before joining the prison service, I’d worked in a medium-secure psychiatric hospital and as a Healthcare Worker and PMVA tutor, supporting people with complex mental health difficulties.

I thought I understood mental health. But understanding it professionally wasn’t the same as experiencing it myself.

Eventually, I was diagnosed with PTSD and received EMDR therapy. I was sceptical at first, but it genuinely helped, even though it was difficult.

I had to recognise that my coping strategies weren’t helping me. Things had to change.

Today, I’m in the best physical and mental position I’ve been in for a very long time. I have a beautiful partner and five daughters, continue as an NHS PMVA tutor, and have started Safer Solutions Training & Consultancy.

Throughout much of that difficult period, I kept working and teaching. People later told me they had no idea what I was dealing with.

On the outside, I was doing my job. Inside, I was struggling.

Nearly 25 years working with people, behaviour, risk and distress have taught me a great deal. But some lessons could never come from a textbook.

Work-related incidents don’t necessarily stay at work. They can affect sleep, relationships, confidence and families. Someone can appear to be coping while struggling privately.

We need to look beyond recording incidents and completing investigations. What happens afterwards? Is meaningful support available?

In training, we must remember that the people in front of us aren’t just names on a register. They’re individuals with their own experiences and vulnerabilities.

I don’t share this for sympathy, or because I’ve got everything figured out. I share it because our experiences can help us improve things for others.

Trauma is everyone’s responsibility. We need environments where people feel able to seek support and where lessons lead to meaningful change.

Sometimes, the most important lessons aren’t the ones we teach. They’re the ones life teaches us.

You can’t learn everything from a training manual.Over 25 years of working in mental health and forensic settings, along...
17/10/2026

You can’t learn everything from a training manual.

Over 25 years of working in mental health and forensic settings, alongside delivering training, I’ve experienced a wide range of situations, challenges and outcomes.

I’ve worked alongside staff doing incredibly challenging jobs, often in complex situations where things don’t always go to plan.

I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and how the best-laid plans can change when you’re dealing with real-life situations.

That experience has shaped the way I deliver training today.

For me, being a tutor isn’t simply about knowing the course content, delivering the slides and making sure everyone passes an assessment.

It’s about understanding the reality of the roles people perform every day.

It’s being able to answer questions based on real situations, explore the challenges staff actually face and help people think through how they might respond when things don’t go as expected.

A good tutor also needs to recognise that people learn differently. Training should be engaging, adaptable and relevant to the people in the room, rather than delivered in exactly the same way every time.

There’s a place for policies, procedures, theory and training manuals. They’re important foundations.

But they can’t replace the knowledge gained from doing the job, learning from experience and understanding the pressures staff face every day.

The best training doesn’t just teach people what they should do. It helps them understand how to apply that knowledge when it really matters.

That’s the approach I believe in, and it’s something I’ll continue bringing to every course I deliver.

Would your staff feel confident using their training today??Not back when they did the course, not the day after the cou...
16/10/2026

Would your staff feel confident using their training today??

Not back when they did the course, not the day after the course, but today, a period of time after the course?

Knowledge and practical skills can fade when they are not regularly revisited, particularly if staff rarely encounter the situations covered during the original training. Here are 5 signs it may be time to consider PMVA refresher training:

1. Staff struggle to explain the correct process - if different team members give very different answers, knowledge may no longer be consistent.

2. Practical skills have not been revisited - remembering a technique and performing it safely are not the same thing.

3. People hesitate during workplace discussions or exercises -uncertainty in a calm setting may become more difficult when pressure rises.

4. Your workplace or risks have changed - new service users, environments, procedures, or incident patterns may affect what staff need from their training.

5. Staff are due to renew their training - refresher training provides an opportunity to revisit essential knowledge, practical core skills, and receive direct feedback.

The purpose is not to catch people out or criticise what they have forgotten, it is to identify gaps before staff are expected to rely on those skills in a real situation. When did your team last have the opportunity to practise their PMVA skills?

To discuss all of the training I offer do drop me a DM anytime. Have a great weekend everyone.

PMVA training should produce more than a certificate!Completing a course matters, meeting organisational requirements ma...
15/10/2026

PMVA training should produce more than a certificate!

Completing a course matters, meeting organisational requirements matters, but neither automatically means somebody feels capable of recognising risk, making a proportionate decision, and using their training when a real situation begins to escalate.

Effective PMVA training should help staff develop:
- Early recognition and prevention skills
- Confident, appropriate accommodation
- Practical de-escalation strategies
- A clearer understanding of risk
- Safe and proportionate physical intervention skills
- The ability to reflect and learn afterwards

It should also give people enough time to ask questions, practise properly, and receive direct feedback. That cannot happen when training is treated as a race to get everyone signed off and back through the door.

At my company Safer Solutions, we provide both initial and refresher PMVA training. Initial training gives new staff and teams the knowledge, practical skills, and structural learning they need to build a strong foundation, and refresher training revisits essential knowledge, identifies where confidence and technique may have slipped, and allows staff to practise using realistic scenarios.

What matters most in your organisation when it comes to staff training?

14/10/2026

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Sometimes, you need to get the foundations right before you build on them.I built this playhouse for my daughter, and lo...
14/10/2026

Sometimes, you need to get the foundations right before you build on them.

I built this playhouse for my daughter, and looking back at the photos got me thinking about how much the same principle applies to training.

When you’re building something, it’s tempting to focus on what the finished result will look like. But without good foundations, everything you build on top of them is going to be harder to get right.

I think training is much the same.

With nearly 25 years of experience teaching and working in the environments many of my participants work in, I’ve learned that it’s easy to overcomplicate things.

Sometimes, the most important thing we can do is go back to the basics, make sure people understand them, practise them properly and build confidence from there.

Does that mean we get everything right first time? No.

But that’s how we learn. We reflect, recognise what could be better, make changes and keep improving.

That applies to the people attending training, the people delivering it and the services we work in.

It’s also how I’m approaching Safer Solutions. I’m building something I believe in, using the experience I’ve gained over nearly 25 years, but I’m still learning and developing along the way.

You don’t build something worthwhile overnight. You get the foundations right, keep learning and build on them.

And hopefully, just like this playhouse, I will end up with something i can be proud of.

A hospital ward, a school, and a supported-living service do not face exactly the same challenges, so why would their sa...
14/10/2026

A hospital ward, a school, and a supported-living service do not face exactly the same challenges, so why would their safety training be exactly the same?

Every organisation has it's own:

- Working environment

- Staff responsibilities

- Policies and procedures

- People it supports

- Operational pressures

- Potential risks

That is why safer solutions does not believe in simply turning up with a generic package and hoping it fits. We take time to understand your organisation before recommending the most appropriate training.

Depending on your needs, bespoke training may include:

De-escalation

Personal safety

Breakaway skills

Search procedures

Physical intervention

Tailored training does not mean lowering standards, it means making the learning relevant, realistic, and easier for staff to apply within their actual workplace. Because ticking the training box is one thing but making sure your team feels properly prepared is another.

If you could improve one part of your team's current safety training, what would it be?

The same training package will not suit every team, workplace, or risk!A hospital ward does not operate in the same way ...
12/10/2026

The same training package will not suit every team, workplace, or risk!

A hospital ward does not operate in the same way as a school, a supported living service will face different challenges from a transporter provider, even two organisations working within the same sector may have very different environments, service users, staffing arrangements, and procedures.

Yet safety training is still too often delivered as though one standard package should work everywhere! It shouldn't!

Before recommending or designing training, we need to ask:
- Who is the training for?
- What situations could staff realistically encounter?
- What does the physical environment look like?
- What policies and responsibilities guide their decisions?
- Where are the current gaps in confidence or capability?
- What does the organisation genuinely need staff to be able to do?

This is why my company Safer Solutions offers bespoke training alongside our established courses. Depending on the organisation, this may include elements of de-escalation, personal safety, breakaway skills, search procedures, or physical intervention.

Tailored training does not mean lowering standards or simply giving people what they want to hear, it means applying appropriate standards to the reality in which staff will use them, because training is only useful if people can understand it, practise it, and apply it within their actual working environment.

Off-the-shelf training may tick a box but relevant training is far more likely to build genuine capability.

How closely does your current training reflect what your staff actually encounter?

Nearly 25 years in this line of work has taught me a lot about people.When I first started teaching at Stockton Hall Hos...
12/10/2026

Nearly 25 years in this line of work has taught me a lot about people.

When I first started teaching at Stockton Hall Hospital back in 2003, I was at the beginning of a journey that would take me through forensic services, the prison service and a variety of other care environments.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about physical intervention, communication, managing risk and keeping people safe.

But one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that you can’t treat every person or every situation the same way.

What works in one environment might not work in another. What helps one person feel safe might make another person feel more anxious.

And the same applies to staff.

People come into training with different experiences, different levels of confidence and different worries about what they’re being asked to do.

That’s why I don’t believe in simply delivering the same training in the same way and expecting it to work everywhere.

We need to understand the people we’re working with, the environment they’re working in and the situations they’re likely to face.

For me, that’s what makes training meaningful.

It’s not about having all the answers or believing there’s one perfect approach.

It’s about being willing to listen, learn and adapt.

Experience teaches you a lot, but only if you’re prepared to keep learning.

That’s something I try to remember, both as a trainer and in the way I run Safer Solutions.

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Ilkley

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+447495494979

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