Already trained with another provider? Build on it with PCT.
You can keep your current physical intervention provider and access PCT’s focused approach to legal understanding and accountable decisions.
Could your staff explain the decision behind an intervention?
“To keep them safe from harm” describes the outcome staff want to achieve. It does not, by itself, explain the legal basis for using force at that moment.
Why this adds value to your existing training
Our governance-led training connects the practical skills your team already holds with the legal basis for using them. Explore how decisions are reviewed: the circumstances and information available at the time, the risks identified, the options considered, and whether the response was necessary and proportionate.
For your organisation, this supports:
- Staff who are better prepared to explain their actions and the decisions behind them.
- Managers who can review practice more meaningfully, identify gaps and support learning.
- Clearer accounts and records for external scrutiny, including questions from inspectors.
Who is this course for?
All staff and management working in children’s homes, including new colleagues and those building on physical intervention training from PCT or another provider.
Bring legal understanding into the review of practice.
PCT connects staff accounts, the child’s experience and the legal framework for children’s homes. Explore how these inform management oversight and learning after an incident.
Explaining practice to Ofsted
Ofsted’s established expectations include necessary and proportionate restraint, records of incidents, leadership review and monitoring, and consideration of the child’s views. PCT connects legal reasoning with these responsibilities, helping your team explain its actions and demonstrate accountable oversight.
Read Ofsted’s children’s homes inspection framework.
Law, guidance and policy: understanding their roles
Legislation sets legal requirements. Statutory guidance explains and supplements the framework. Your home’s policies set out how staff are expected to work within it. PCT’s approach examines these together while being clear about their different roles.
For children’s homes in England, the registered person must have regard to the statutory guide when interpreting and meeting the Regulations. Read the Department for Education’s guide.
What this children’s homes law course covers
Children’s rights, welfare and legal duties
Explore the legal considerations that surround the use of force with children, including welfare, human rights, staff responsibilities and the context in which a decision is made.
The children’s homes framework
Examine the Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and the accompanying statutory guide. Explore the relationship between protecting children, leadership responsibilities, behaviour management and the use of restraint. The emphasis is on understanding how the framework relates to staff decisions and management oversight.
Necessity, proportionality and the purpose of restraint
Consider the permitted purposes and limits set out in Regulation 20. Work through what it means to assess whether restraint is necessary and proportionate in the circumstances, rather than treating the existence of a policy or previous training as the whole justification.
Risk assessment and reducing the need for intervention
Explore the risks facing the child and others, the possible consequences of acting or not acting, and the options available to staff. Connect legal understanding with prevention, de-escalation and the child’s individual needs. Reflect on what was known at the time when reviewing an earlier decision.
The PCT Decision Assessment Tool
The course introduces PCT’s own tool to bring legal considerations and assessment of risk into the same training discussion. Use it to explore proposed responses and reflect on previous interventions, with attention to the reasons behind a decision and opportunities to reduce the need for restraint.
Recording, review and accountability
Explore the behaviour-management policy and recording requirements in Regulation 35, including documenting the event, the steps taken to avoid intervention, its outcome and subsequent review. Consider how staff accounts, management scrutiny and the child’s perspective contribute to learning and accountable practice.
How the course works
Learning & delivery
A one-day course focused on legal understanding, risk assessment and reflection on decisions. The PCT Decision Assessment Tool connects these areas of learning. Discuss your staff roles, experience and priorities so the agreed course emphasis relates to your home. Practical physical intervention skills are taught in a separate course.
All PCT courses are delivered face to face.
Assessment & certification
This course develops legal understanding and reflection on decisions. It does not assess practical physical intervention skills. Your course confirmation sets out the attendance and assessment requirements for the law programme.
- Certificate issued by
- Prime Care Training (PCT)
- Certificate title
- Legal Framework and Responsibilities for Use of Force with Children
- PCT renewal interval
- 36 months
- Course length
- 1 day
PCT issues its own course certificates after successful completion and cleared payment. Renewal intervals shown are PCT’s course intervals; your organisation may identify a need for earlier refresher learning. Read the booking and assessment arrangements.
From knowing the rules to explaining a decision.
The value of the learning is in the questions your team can work through together. These prompts illustrate the kind of reflection to bring to the course:
“We followed the home’s policy.”
What was the legal basis for the action? What risk was identified, which alternatives were considered, and how was the response judged necessary and proportionate?
“What can we learn from this intervention?”
What was known at the time? What do the record and the child’s account tell us? What should staff and managers review to inform future decisions?
This is a one-day law and decision-making course. Practical physical intervention skills are covered by the separate physical intervention course. Agree the emphasis, learner needs and course arrangements with PCT before booking.
Plan your booking
This course focuses on the framework for children’s homes in England. Your proposal sets out the learning focus, delivery arrangements and assessment or course records.
Read the legal framework
The course is grounded in the framework for children’s homes in England. These sources support the topics above; the page is a course overview, not a determination that any particular intervention is lawful.
Regulation 20: restraint and deprivation of libertyRegulation 35: behaviour management policies and recordsDepartment for Education: regulations and quality standards guide