The Manual Handling course is intended to provide you with an understanding of how to safely handle loads. It covers practical aspects of lifting, lowering, carrying, pushing and pulling loads. It also provides information on the human spinal system, risk assessment, the legal responsibility of employers to their employees and techniques for the prevention of accidents. The course involves knowledge development, and a series of practical exercises, followed by scenarios that allow you to put your skills into practice. We will have an even balance between knowledge development and practical exercises. I will make your training relevant to your current employment or circumstances throughout the course. More than a third of all over three day injuries reported each year to the Health & Safety Executive and local Authorities are caused by manual handling ‘the transporting or supporting of loads by hand or by bodily force’. Most of the reported accidents caused by back injury, though hands, arms and feet are also vulnerable. In 1995, an estimated average of 11 working days per sufferer was lost through musculoskeletal disorders affecting the back, caused by work.