Introduction to the Course for the Trainer The Aim The aim of this program is to assist in the identification of hazards to home care workers and provide materials for program assessment. The materials have been developed in cooperation with home care agency owners, managers, and employees. The training materials are specifically designed to take into consideration the unique challenges to addressing health and safety problems in the home care setting including: Ever changing work environment Employers lack of control over workers environment Health and safety problems can be controlled no matter what the setting given increased awareness, recognition, and communication. Using the Materials This training program is designed to be implemented by those responsible for training in a home care agency. The manual is not designed to be a conventional training course. It is designed for the trainer to be able to assess the needs of the participants and select those portions of the materials that best meet the participants’ needs. The first section of the materials is a summary describing the course and provides tools for assessing the needs of the participants. The second section of the manual provides one hour exercises that address a variety of home care worker health and safety issues. The one hour exercises may be used in one hour training sessions or as part of a ½ or full day training program. The manual contains about 16 hours worth of material. The materials have been organized to cover both some of the essentials of home care programs and specific hazards in the home care industry. Each exercise consists of a description of the purpose of the activity, materials or references to materials, and approximate times are given for the exercises in order to assist in this process. Training Methods The materials in this manual are designed to be delivered using a variety of teaching methods that will create an interactive learning environment tailored to the needs of a particular student group. The term "trainer" will be used to describe the facilitator, teacher, or tutor and "participant" to describe the people attending. Although some of the material is designed for a presentation-discussion format, much is designed so that the participants will become self-sufficient in learning more about health and safety. The goal is to give the participants tools to continue working in this area after the course has ended. In almost every training situation, there will be a diverse group of people with different training needs. The training materials should be chosen keeping in mind some basic facts about adult learning processes.