Member Article

Health and safety expert launches North Shields training enterprise

Experienced health and safety professional Lorraine Brown has realised a long-standing dream of running her own business, establishing 1st Aid & Safety Ltd in North Shields.

Lorraine provides a range of training courses designed to help businesses support staff working within all aspects of health and social care and equip them with the vital skills and qualifications they need to carry out their role safely.

Having worked within healthy and safety training for over a decade, Lorraine spotted an opportunity to strike out on her own and provide bespoke packages to small and medium sized enterprises that many not have the resources to engage a H&S consultancy but instead require practical, down to earth one-to-one support and advise to guide them through the often tricky minefield of legislative requirements.

Using her many years of expertise and knowledge, as well as her personal experience of being visually impaired and dealing with epilepsy and arthritis, Lorraine has developed a broad course portfolio that includes First Aid for Carers, Manual Handling, Epilepsy Awareness with Emergency Medication and Emergency First Aid at Work.

Having already secured a number of key clients, Lorraine is now looking to develop her business and is pursuing a number of new opportunities to support operations based throughout the North East.

She said: “All too often, and particularly in relation to health and social care, training courses are delivered without putting the needs and understanding of the participants first. Being disabled myself, I use my own experience to make certain that I deliver training which addresses and effectively communicates the needs of those people that the participants are supporting.

“My aim when establishing 1st Aid & Safety Ltd was to ensure that the range of courses provided were communicated in a way which was approachable and not intimidating for the audience and would give them the knowledge and the confidence required to be capable of dealing with potential first aid incidents efficiently.”

Lorraine added: “Working for myself is something that looking back I should have done years ago. Starting your own business can be very intimidating but I had confidence in my ability and knew that there was a demand for the comprehensive training that I was looking to offer to businesses and organisations.

“Now, I have a far better work life balance and gain real satisfaction from the difference that I am making not only to those who attend of the courses, but also those that the participants go on to help and support each day through their work in health and social care.”

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