BackCare

BackCare Awareness Week is an annual event that gives BackCare and our partners the opportunity to promote awareness of back pain and the issues surrounding it, including prevention and treatment. 

BackCare Awareness Week October 2011

Schoolchildren and their teachers are the focus of this year's BackCare Awareness Week.

BackCare believe young backs are being damaged by overweight schoolbags and badly-designed chairs, while thousands of primary school teachers are suffering in silence from back problems.

The charity is calling for legislation intended to protect adults in the workplace to be extended to cover children at school.

In a bid to tackle the problem, BackCare have identified the need for a training course. It hopes to develop such a course for its professional members which would enable them to advise schools as to best practice.

Once trained, BackCare's professional members will offer their services to the country’s 24,000 schools to advise on moving and handling, choice and use of furniture, and learning systems which could be linked to back injuries.

The surprising extent of back problems suffered by primary school teachers was revealed earlier this year in a survey by the education union Voice.

It discovered that 88% experienced back pain, most at least once a week while working at school, and 70% had sought medical treatment.

They said their back problems were caused by bending over low tables (91%), sitting on children’s chairs (85%), and kneeling at low tables or on the floor (71%).

Other causes were lifting or carrying children, working at child-height computers, and bending over laptops in class.  Many of those who took part in the survey said they could no longer sit on the floor, worked part-time rather than full-time, moved to work with older children, or were forced to take ill-health retirement.

Alarmingly, only 8% said they had officially reported their problems either because they did not know how to raise their concerns or they were afraid of jeopardising their careers.

At the same time, the damaging effect of heavy school bags on the backs of primary and secondary school children has long been a major worry for BackCare.

Most of the four million children at secondary school will be asked at some stage in their school career to carry levels of weight that he charity considers to be “excessive and dangerous to health.”

And yet, BackCare has discovered, schools receive no advice at all on the impact of furniture and bags on posture and concentration.