I've had a look through the archives and there are 30 pages of discussion of LOLER but I couldn't see anything relating to my question. I've been dealing with a care home that uses hoists to raise elderly residents, they have individual slings for every resident and a 'competent person' (an external contractor) is employed to inspect the hoists every six months. They were recently advised by a manual handling trainer that the slings should only be checked by a 'competent person'. The carers have been carrying out a visual inspection of the slings before each use in addition to the thorough examination carried out by the competen person. I believe this is a good example of best practice in action and am concerned that the home has now been advised to stop the visual inspection and 'leave it to a professional'. Does anyone know if there is a good reason to discourage a simple visual inspection of slings prior to use? (The visual check would be for obvious wear and tear or damage since the last use.) Thank you for any help!

Thank you bilbo for confirming what I was thinking.

Wholeheartedly concur with respondents with a caveat that this should be part of any manual handling training course and on the job training is the familiarity of the different type of slings as well as the clips as a training course cannot cover all different types and sizes.

Poor and incorrect advice from that MH trainer, you may be doing others a favour by making contact and pointing out the error. Visual exam before use is a must do. See Annex 2 of this pdf http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hsis3.pdf and http://www.hse.gov.uk/he.../moving-handling.htm#a10

I work in the Care Sector and my company had a similar issue with what was being taught to Carers by outside companies but the subject was Fire awareness. I was asked to attend incognito to see what the content was and how it was presented. My main issue was not with the Trainers but with some of the people attending,it was painfully obvious that they had no interest in being there and showed no enthusiasm.I doubt if they grasped the subject matter of this or any other training they attended The content of the course presented was applicable to the level necessary and was put over well I suspect that it could be the Trainers have may emphasised that the person inspecting the slings needs to know what they are looking for ,a person new in off the streets would not, so to ask advice off "old hands" till they are familiar with the slings. In my experience some of these people who are employed unfortunately take the job because they cannot get any other,luckily they are greatly outnumbered by some lovely caring people who work for minimum wage and are expected to really earn it

Agree keep the visual checks. Our issue is the trackability of the checks so we are having our slings colour tagged following the next LOLER check