Ligature Response Training | Half-Day Course
This half-day course is for staff who already hold a current first aid certificate and work where ligature incidents are a foreseeable risk. That includes mental health wards, psychiatric units, prisons, probation, refuges, children’s homes and some residential care services.
The CQC expects services to train staff, reduce environmental risk and respond when an incident happens. This course covers those duties in a practical classroom session.
It is not theory only; you practise approach, cutting tools, airway care and what to do after the event. We use drawings and X-rays during the course, not graphic photographs. We do however describe what a rescuer may face in the time of need.
We dust off your existing first aid knowledge and update it for a casualty who may have a spinal injury. This includes the “jaw thrust” manoeuvre as well as reviewing the basic “head tilt, chin lift” technique, and a spinal variant of the recovery position.
If you do not hold a current first aid certificate, book Ligature Response and Basic Life Support instead.
Want the warning signs first? Read Ligature Response: How to Identify and Respond to Warning Signs.
Working in a home-like care setting? See our case study on balancing comfort and ligature safety.
If your team also closes wounds after an incident, look at the half-day Wound Closure course.
What You Will Learn
- Who this is for: staff in mental health, secure, residential, refuge and children’s settings where ligature risk is foreseeable.
- Definitions: hanging, strangulation and suffocation, including fully suspended, part suspended and unsuspended casualties.
- Facts and figures: what the current UK data tells us, without turning the morning into a statistics lecture.
- The neck: why airway, blood flow and the cervical spine are at risk, and why you treat every incident as a possible spinal injury.
- Signs of ligature injury: what you may see and what that means for first aid.
- Risk in your setting: rooms, fixtures and items that create opportunity.
- Tools: how to choose and use the cutters and hooks your service issues.
- Fully suspended casualty: call for help, scene safety, take the weight, cut, lower.
- Part-suspended casualty: support the upper body, take the strain off the ligature, cut, lower.
- Unsuspended casualty: remove the ligature and start first aid.
- Practical: cut a ligature with the right tool, under instructor watch.
- Spinal first aid: how to spot a possible spinal injury and limit movement to what is needed to save life.
- Basic Life Support update: primary survey (RCUK 2025), jaw thrust and head tilt / chin lift, spinal variant of the recovery position, CPR and AED.
- After the incident: scene preservation, incident form, who you notify, and looking after the team.
Course Details and Assessment
This course is face to face only. Tool handling and rescue practice need an instructor in the room.
- Duration: 4 hours (half day).
- Open course times: 9:00am to 1:00pm.
- Group size: maximum 12 learners per instructor.
- Assessment: continuous practical observation. You must show safe use of the rescue tools.
- Certificate: Chris Garland Training PDF certificate on a pass.
Resuscitation follows Resuscitation Council UK 2025. This half-day updates first aiders for a possible spinal injury. It does not replace a full Emergency First Aid or First Aid at Work certificate.
Most services refresh these skills every year. Book the Ligature Response Annual Refresher when certificates are due.
Tools You Will Practise With
You handle the cutters and rescue hooks commonly issued in health and care, including:
- Medical shears and emergency safety scissors
- Shark and Big Fish style hooked rescue knives
- Cruze Cutter and Res-Q-Hook tools
- Barrington LC1 and LC-UZI hooks
- MAC Coltellerie TS01, TS05 and 697 Rescue
- StatGear SuperVizor XT and Gill Harness cutters
- Dive-network cutters and Ex-cell UK257
- Cable cutters for metal fittings
- EN388 Cut Level 5 gloves
Who Can Attend
- Minimum age 18.
- You should hold a current first aid certificate. If you do not, book Ligature Response and Basic Life Support instead. That is a one-day course.
- You need to be able to work on the floor for the practical.
- Teaching and assessment are in English. Contact us before booking if you need a reasonable adjustment.
Venues and Private Bookings
Open courses run at our training centre in Knutsford, Cheshire. Read the joining instructions for times, parking and what to wear.
A private course on your site is usually the better option. We can set scenarios around your rooms and the tools your staff actually carry.
Every course plants a tree. See our Social Value and Sustainability page. Request a private quote on the Corporate and Bespoke Training Quotations page.
Related Training and Guides
- Annual refresher: Ligature Response Annual Refresher
- With first aid: Ligature Response and Basic Life Support
- Wound care: Wound Closure Course | Half Day
- Warning signs: How to identify and respond to warning signs
- Residential care: Balancing domestic comfort and ligature safety
- Resuscitation update: RCUK Guidelines 2025 vs 2021
- Joining notes: Joining instructions
- Social value: Social Value and Sustainability
- FAQs: FAQ page
- Group size rules: Terms, conditions and policies
- HSE first aid duties: What employers need to do
