Starting Monday 17th October the National Charity BackCare is promoting – BackCare Awareness Week. This year the theme is ‘Children and their Teachers’. Focussing on the back problems teachers encounter and the also the stresses and strains on young backs due to heavy school bags and badly designed furniture.
To tackle this, the charity is calling for changes in health and safety laws and training courses to help schools learn more about best practice for back health. And with 88% of primary school teachers reporting back pain, it’s definitely an area of pressing need.
When questioned Teachers felt that there back problems were aggravated by bending over low tables, sitting on children’s chairs and kneeling at low tables or on the floor.
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 and significant concern to many practising Physiotherapists.
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 the charity considers to be “excessive and dangerous to health.” More than 120,000 of them will see a doctor before the age of 16 about back pain.
The issue of back pain isn’t of course confined to schools. It is thought that 4 out of every 5 adults will experience back pain at some point in their life, and the fact that back pain causes around 4.9 million adult sick days each year must be a matter of concern. It is clearly important to continue to raise awareness of the problems back pain can cause, and to promote appropriate methods of prevention and treatment.
The team at Physiocare has a particular interest in the management of Back and Neck problems. Their specialist training enables them to help in the management of acute and chronic recurrent spinal pain and dysfunction. They undertake a thorough assessment of each problem to determine potential causes; both physical and environmental, before developing an individualised treatment program.
