Evacuation procedure for large secondary school with 4 wheelchair users

Michelle Stone · 2019-03-19T14:17:13Z

Hi, I visit a large secondary school where I see 4 pupils who all use wheelchairs. Sometimes a 5th pupil also uses a wheelchair. The SENCo is up to date with Moving and Handling training and Evac Chair training. However, we are not sure how to ‘join the dots’- e.g. last week the lift broke with a pupil inside it. This pupil uses a powered wheelchair. The pupil was effectively stuck. They managed to somehow get the lift back upstairs but then it stopped working completely. In this event, they realised that if there was a fire, they would not be able to get the pupil out of the wheelchair and into the Evac chair. And then if they were able to do that, the wheelchair would be upstairs and the pupil would have no wheelchair downstairs. If it had happened that the other pupils who use wheelchairs were also in that area of the school, what would they do? The Evac Chair adviser for the school could not offer advice. Nor could the fire brigade whose advice is to leave the pupil at the refuge point. I’d really appreciate any advice on this. Many thanks

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Angela Broadbent

Apr 03, 2019 8:51 am

(@abroadbentregency-worcs-sch-uk)

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Just to add -if you use up to 4 people in an evacuation, it has been stressed to us that you are risking the lives of 5 people -the safest option by far is to educate on the ground floor and this curriculum planning has been successful in some of our high schools -it saves time with lift travel and as we know -lifts do break down. Even if the majority of lessons could be taught down stairs it significantly reduces the risk.

Angela

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