Progressive Horizontal Evacuation Training
Specialist Fire Safety training for care homes.
Care home businesses must demonstrate that they provide suitable means of escape arrangements for all relevant people under the fire safety legislation.
Evacuation training is essential in care homes as they may have up to 10 residents per bedroom compartment with minimal staff working at night.
One of the challenges for care homes is being able to adequately show that their staffing ratios are suitable for evacuating the largest and most challenging bedroom compartment within an appropriate timeframe.
There can be no reliance on assistance from the Fire & Rescue Service as a part of your evacuation strategy.
Fire drills and training in the evacuation equipment are not enough.
Fire drills and training in the use of evacuation equipment lead to a fragmented approach and a lack of preparedness.
Suitable training should include simulating the evacuation of your largest and most difficult bedroom compartments.
Did you know that the relevant fire safety guidance for care home states that staff should be able to evacuate any individual bedroom compartment within 2.5 minutes during normal operating hours?
2.5 minutes is a starting point to which you should make an assessment during periods with minimal staffing levels, but increased evacuation times need to be justified through risk assessment.
Without physically simulating these scenarios you cannot be certain that your current provisions are suitable, which means your service users could be at risk if a fire occurs.
To ensure a safe and dignified evacuation of service users this means robust training, procedures, Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans, suitable evacuation lifting equipment and careful management of the premises.
We can advise you on how to identify those who are at risk and help you to gain an understanding of the fire safety design of your building.
Our Progressive Horizontal Evacuation (PHE) training will take your staff through every step of the process, from the first alarm to full evacuation.
- We have developed an interactive presentation that introduces the key principles of the evacuation strategy.
- Your team will then each take part in practical training with the star of our team – Ruth, a 50kg evacuation dummy.
- We put your staff through their paces, testing them against the clock, to give them the key skills and understanding they need.
- Most importantly, you will be able to demonstrate your actual evacuation times are acceptable.
Then once the training is complete, we make recommendations for any necessary improvements.
Please note, we only offer this particular form of training to clients for which we’ve delivered a Fire Risk Assessment and fire safety training – ensuring that they have suitable fire precautions in place and staff have adequate baseline training.