Experience of an apprentice

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Chris Toon:

We have spent just over four months as employees of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service. It has been an extremely exciting experience so far, not to mention an eye opening one.

We have started writing this blog to highlight the need for apprentices and how we make a difference across the organisation.

Over the coming weeks, we will be displaying pictures and stories showing the work we have been involved in and how it has benefitted members of the public as well as our colleagues.

Currently, we are promoting the work we do as apprentices to raise our public profile due to our involvement with the Brathay Challenge and National Apprenticeship Week.

Over the next few weeks we will show the activities we participate in, ranging from checking somebody’s smoke alarm at home whilst completing a full Home Safety Check, to being out on the street providing safety information with a public awareness campaign.

We don’t want to spoil the surprise by letting you in on too much that we are doing so you will just have to keep coming back to this page to find out...

New Beginnings

At the start of the first week, we were brought into Manchester's training centre and proudly presented with our uniforms.

By the end of the first week, we were well integrated into our own boroughs and new teams, right across Greater Manchester.

This helped us quickly feel the sense of family within the service that we had been told existed and which we felt proud after such a rigorous recruitment process to finally join.

Within the first month, we met with Peter O’Reilly, Director of Prevention and Protection.

He congratulated us for being successful getting through the recruitment process and gaining the apprenticeship.

He went on to explain some of his own experiences in the 27 years he had been part of the service. His fondness and passion for the job, even after a long successful career was still evident which just encouraged us further.

Since then, we have toured the stations across our boroughs to familiarise ourselves with staff and the crews operating within them.

We have started to perform tasks and events within our own boroughs to help highlight dangers to the public and help minimising risk to individuals and families.

We have assisted in joint projects which have allowed us to develop our understanding of working with organisations such as Greater Manchester Police (we worked on Operation Stay Safe with them – read more about that here) and assisted in making many valuable contacts to aid us further in the future.

One of the main areas however, that we feel we have been able to impact on is the education of the younger generations.

To a child, we apprentices are viewed as more approachable for discussions as we of a similar age and understanding to themselves.

This has shown the extraordinary steps that Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service has taken to move with the times and revolutionise the way we provide messages to make them as effective as possible to their audience.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our time within the organisation so far and we continue to look for new challenges to sink our teeth into.

Thank you for reading and make sure you are checking the page regularly for updates on our work.