What if a participant asks you to lift them in a way that is unsafe?
You decline the technique, offer the method in their manual handling plan, and escalate the request so their occupational therapist can review the plan if they want it changed. Choice and control and the dignity of risk are central to the NDIS, and they are real: a participant can choose to go out in the rain, sit on the low couch they like or walk further than usual. What they cannot do is direct you to perform a technique that is unsafe for them or for you, or that contradicts their plan. Those are two different kinds of risk, and this guide is about telling them apart, saying no respectfully, and making sure the request goes somewhere useful.
Last reviewed September 2026 · Applies to the Manual Handling Training for Disability Support Workers course.
Two kinds of risk that get confused
Dignity of risk means the participant's right to make choices about their own life that carry some risk to themselves. It is a principle of the NDIS and of good support work, and it exists because people with disability have historically had ordinary risks removed from their lives by others deciding for them. Respecting it means supporting a participant's decision about where they go, what they eat and what they attempt, even when you would choose differently.
A manual handling technique is a different matter, because it involves your body as well as theirs. When a participant asks you to lift them under the arms instead of using the transfer board, or to do a two-worker hoist transfer on your own, they are asking you to accept a risk of injury to yourself, and to accept one on their behalf that their OT has already assessed and designed out. Choice and control cover the participant's own life, not how much risk your body takes, and they do not override your provider's duty under work health and safety law to control hazardous manual tasks so far as is reasonably practicable, or your own duty to take reasonable care and follow reasonable instructions.
How to say no without saying no to the person
The words matter, because a participant who feels dismissed will stop telling you what they want, and that makes support less safe rather than more. Be direct about what you cannot do, clear about why, and specific about what you can do instead and what happens next. Module 6, Supporting Participants with Mobility, suggests language along these lines and it is worth practising before you need it.
- Name the limit and the reason: "I am not able to lift you that way, because it is not in your plan and it could hurt one of us"
- Offer the planned method now: "What I can do is use the transfer board, and we can take it at your pace"
- Offer the route to change: "If you want the method changed, I will ask your coordinator to get the OT to look at it"
- Follow through: make the referral the same day and record the request in your shift notes
- Keep the rest of the support unchanged, so the refusal is about one technique and not about the participant
Families, habits and pressure
The request often comes from a family member rather than the participant: a parent who has lifted their adult child under the arms for twenty years and finds the transfer board fiddly. Their method may have worked for them, but their body and their relationship with the participant are not yours, and the plan exists precisely because a therapist assessed the transfer and chose a safer method. Explain that you are required to follow the plan, provide the planned support, and pass the family's concern to your coordinator so the OT can hear it.
Pressure also comes from time. A participant who is late for a day program and a worker who wants to help are a combination that produces improvised lifts. The plan does not have a shortcut clause. If the planned method cannot be done today because equipment or a second worker is missing, the support waits and the shortfall is reported, and the participant is told honestly why.
If a participant becomes distressed or resists during a transfer, stop and make everyone safe. Manual handling is never restraint: you do not hold, drag or pin a person to finish a task, and physically restraining someone outside an authorised behaviour support plan is a regulated restrictive practice. Give them time and space, use the strategies in their behaviour support plan, and reschedule or call for support.
Escalating so the plan can change
A participant who repeatedly asks for a different method is giving you information: the current method may be uncomfortable, slow, undignified or simply disliked, and any of those is a legitimate reason for an OT to review it. Refusing the unsafe technique and doing nothing else leaves the participant stuck. Refusing it and escalating means the plan can be reviewed, alternative equipment considered and the participant's preference genuinely weighed by the person qualified to weigh it.
Module 2, Australian Work Health and Safety Principles, explains how the participant's plan is the route through which your provider's WHS duty reaches you, and Module 8 covers how to record and escalate a request or a concern so that it is acted on rather than lost. The course gives you the reasoning and the language. Your provider is responsible for the escalation pathway, for arranging the OT review, and for backing you when you decline an unsafe technique.
Common questions
Sources
- Safe Work Australia — Model Code of Practice: Hazardous manual tasks — The national code the state and territory regulators adopt or mirror.
- Safe Work Australia — Lifting, pushing and pulling (manual tasks)
- NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission — NDIS Practice Standards — Provider obligations; this course is not the NDIS Worker Orientation Module.
General information about Australian work health and safety duties, not legal advice. Your employer’s procedures and the regulator in your state take precedence.
Ready to start?
Work through the disability support course and the assessment at your own pace. You only pay A$49 if you pass and want the certificate.
Take the Assessment