Our Conference - Other Apprentices' Futures

Post by Apprentice CSA Chris Toon:

If we were looking for a way of promoting ourselves to fire services, as well the public, I don’t think we could have done much better than our conference this week.

The conference was attended by more than 100 people from different fire and rescue services right across the UK.
They had travelled to Manchester to find out not only what we have been doing, but how GMFRS have set it up so that they may be able to follow in the same footsteps.

Apprentice CSA Chris Toon

To support us with this, we had Linda Stokes from The National Apprenticeship Service who came down to speak about how organisations can be supported to start apprentice schemes of their own.
Julie Benson from Skills for Justice was also in attendance to provide advice and guidance to interested parties.

My role for the day was similar to my job swap that I completed during National Apprenticeship Week.
I was working with the Corporate Communications team to liaise with and interview delegates who had attended the conference. I found this particularly exciting and spent a long time working out who I was going to try and speak to and what it is that I wanted to ask. I had three simple questions for each of them:

•         Why have you attended the apprentice conference in Manchester?
•         What do you think about the approach that Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue have taken towards apprenticeships?
•         Do you think based on the information you have seen today, it would encourage you to start your own apprenticeship scheme?

I spoke to numerous people throughout the day within my role as a reporter, one of which was Tom George, Deputy Head of Community Safety for London Fire Brigade.
We discussed the difficulties services faced with cuts to budgets across the UK and how that may make it hard to bring forward apprenticeships to London Fire Brigade.
However we did discuss that based on our model and potential funding being provided, it may be something to look on in the future for them. He said: “The approach GMFRS has taken is fantastic.”
On the subject of our 12 apprentices, he said: “What Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue has achieved in six months is inspirational, that is where we would aspire to be.”
                                               
We also had a presentation delivered from George Martin. He is the Fire Service National Liaison Officer for the Prince’s Trust. He spoke of how the Prince’s Trust offers support, help and guidance to youngsters and how his ideal vision would be to increase the work they do and provide help in the same manner to more people.
Given my own experience with the Prince’s Trust, I would have to agree. I found the course I had attended provided me with the skills to gain the apprenticeship I have now and the confidence to complete what is asked as part of my job role. My old Prince’s Trust team leader is still often in contact to find out how things are going and offers valuable support which is always greatly appreciated.

I got chance to speak to numerous organisations, although I enjoyed talking to Martin Tait, Group Manager from Tayside Fire & Rescue. He explained: “I am responsible for Prevention, Protection and Response within Dundee City. We’re doing a lot of youth engagement but we haven’t started formally introducing apprenticeships yet. Today so far has certainly captured me and it will be great to see how the rest of the day unfolds.”

Just before he left for the day, I managed to catch up with Peter O’Reilly, Director of Prevention and Protection from Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue, to find out what he feels about the apprentices. It was great to hear from someone so well-known and respected within the organisation what an impact, in his opinion we have made.


Assistant Chief Fire Officer Peter O'Reilly with apprentices Francesca and Greg on their first day six months ago


He said: “It is fantastic to see the achievements that the apprentices have made in a short space of time. The energy and the alternative views they have brought have helped bring a different perspective to our organisation and how we approach Prevention. I can’t wait to see what they do in the next six months.”

With encouragement like that coming from the top, I don’t think it is a surprise that all the apprentices are coming into their own and starting to show the skills we have been developing over the last six months. I have said before that we offer a way of engaging with youngsters that for many years may have been difficult due to social barriers. We are breaking down those barriers and rewriting the book on the most effective methods of Prevention.

You will just have to keep updated with all we are up to for the remaining six months on our blog.

6 Month Presentations.....

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor William Hartley:

Earlier this week, the apprentices had the opportunity to impress our team leaders and managers by deliver a presentation to highlight the skills that we have been learning in the first six months that we have been part of the organisation.

Admittedly, it was extremely nerveracking. I don’t know how, but being faced with 20 people eagerly awaiting hearing what you have been working on seems a lot more terrifying than standing in front of a school with a few hundred students to deliver a safety message.

The day started off with Area Manager Geoff Harris, Head of Protection, introducing himself and explaining that he was extremely keen on seeing what we had been up to, and how we had coped with it so far. He left these thoughts,

“Our 12 Community Safety Advisor apprentices have been with us for 6 months now. I had the pleasure of attending their presentation event last Monday and seeing the work that they’ve been involved in since they joined us. It was great to see how they had all developed in knowledge, experience and confidence with many of them already suggesting different ways of doing things and delivering work on their own. Their enthusiasm was clear and infectious and the energy that they bring to GMFRS is fantastic. Given what I’ve seen I have no doubt that they will go on to achieve much more in the future and their experiences will help us to shape the way that the Service supports young people in the future”.

The day went extremely well and each apprentice was able to deliver fantastic presentation highlighting the support they have received whilst building their skills with the community safety advisors they work with on each borough. We spoke about the apprentices delivering Home Safety Checks to the public, events that they had set up and co-ordinated by themselves and also the Brathay Challenge which they are involved in at the moment.

Clearly this is something we are going to be asked to do again. After the success of the presentations, we as a team feel a lot more confident about standing up in front of the 100-plus strong audience next week at our apprenticeship conference.  The conference has been organised to highlight the benefit of apprentices within the organisation to other fire and rescue services from across the country and now we have shown what we are capable of, I'm looking forward to showing a much wider audience.

Frankie job swaps for the week

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Francesca Martinelli:

This past week I have been shadowing our Internship Co-ordinator in Human Resources, Gina Marks, finding out more and assisting her in her role.

During my time with Gina I have been given the very important job of helping to organise The Apprentice Conference.

The tasks this included are: typing out all of the name badges, putting the attendees into groups and typing out a register, but I have also been put in charge of ‘The Apprentice Showcase’.

This is where apprentices get an even bigger chance to shine by performing the speeches we have prepared to 90 people!

We all have our own topics that we wish to discuss, providing what the topic is I have now put us each in a suitable order.

The most notable thing was getting a call from Dan Sims in Corporate Communications asking if I could be interviewed by Real Radio North West!

Never one to pass up a publicity opportunity, or indeed disappoint my public, I said yes!  The interview was played on the breakfast show on Real Radio on Thursday, March 14.

I am really enjoying my time in HR and I feel really important making decisions and organising things.  Thank you to Gina for showing me the ropes.

Promoting No Smoking Day

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Gary Manville:


Today across Greater Manchester different events were being run to promote No Smoking Day.

Over in Bolton, the community fire safety team got involved with the Bolton Stop Smoking service and Bolton One aka ‘The Jason Kenny Centre’. It was the first event I’ve actually been put in charge of running on the day so was feeling a bit anxious this morning before it began.



As we set up myself and two others - apprentice Caitlin Alcock and a Prince’s Trust work experience Brendan Johnson - began to think we’d have a quiet day but surprisingly we were swamped with people asking for fire safety advice and help with quitting smoking. 



The No Smoking Day event offered advice and information

Throughout the day we was giving out advice and filling out Home Safety Check forms. At dinner the fitness team from the gym came over to do blood pressure checks and found fire service staff eating burgers for their lunch. Let’s just say we had a lot of banter with the fitness instructors over the burgers.



After a while the fitness team asked us if we wanted to have our blood pressure checked as not many members of the public wanted to try - we even did a smoker's breath test which is to find out how much your lungs are effected with smoking. I don't smoking which means my lungs were ok.



Gary (left) has his blood pressure checked

All in all was a fun day meeting members of public and working with the partners in the NHS and Bolton One promoting not only No Smoking Day but talking about what we do now in the community to help people.



Bethany is picture perfect in newspaper article

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Bethany Pearson

I was recently interviewed by a reporter for an article in the Bury Times newspaper and had my picture taken with Katie Swierczynski, the Community Safety Advisor for Bury Borough.

Pictured left to right are Bethany and Katie

During the interview I spoke about what I was doing before the apprenticeship, the types of things we do as apprentices and what I would like to come out with when the scheme is over.

I also spoke about the National Apprenticeship Week that’s coming up and the types of things we are doing leading up to this competition.

Some of the things I talked about in the interview included:

•             Starting an apprentice blog

•             Using social media to promote what we are doing

•             Designing and putting up posters

•             Organising local newspaper, radio and TV coverage

The article was published in the paper on Thursday, February 28 but unfortunately isn't on the website.

Caitlin's first event is a blazing success

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Caitlin Alcock

I had my first opportunity to organise and run a community event this week.

Yesterday, (March 7) I organized for the Kitchen Fire Safety Unit to give a demonstration to members of the public who visited Wigan town centre for the food and drink festival.

With this already being a public event, we wanted to follow a similar message and highlight the dangers that can be caused by cooking as this is our main cause of house fires in Greater Manchester.

We were supported throughout the day by Green Watch crews from Wigan Fire Station.

Crew Manager Simon Connor kindly went the extra mile by not only providing demonstrations to the public, but also assisting me in running my first event.

Green Watch were fantastic with the public, they allowed the children to board the fire engine and gave them a tour around it several times throughout the day, again explaining and showing the public all the equipment.

Whilst we were there, we provided safety messages around cooking and also used the time to generate some Home Safety Checks with the crews.

The event was a great success and definitely raised a lot of awareness around what we were doing.

The shocked crowd watching the demo

Many people were shocked to see how quickly the fire spread in the Kitchen Fire Safety Unit.

We also made sure to try and reiterate the Service’s ‘ban the pan’ message.

Overall, I think I gained a lot of confidence from running my first event and I’m now thoroughly looking forward to starting on the next one.

The Power of Twitter

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Chris Toon

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to find out how Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service would handle the social media aspect of a major incident.

GMFRS is showing that they are moving with the times and are well up to date with one of the most used sources for public discussion.

With over 500 million currently active Twitter accounts, this social media website has an enormous amount of people that can be reached quickly and effectively which Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service is choosing to make use of.


Unfortunately, not all of the information that is Tweeted each day is accurate or factual.
Hence why this site, if left unchecked, could very quickly and easily damage the reputation that the service has built up over many years.

Fortunately, this is not the case with the GMFRS Twitter feed.

We have a fantastic team over at Corporate Communications that I had the fortune to spend the day working with to witness how they deal with major incidents.

Whilst there, I saw first-hand how quickly news of a major incident spreads across Twitter via a social media simulator at a big training exercise.

However, no sooner had the information been Tweeted, GMFRS replied to inform and provide reassurance anyone discussing it. We were also able to respond to questions and provide contact details for helplines and updates.

One of the main areas highlighted was that people panic when they do not know what is going on and the panic spreads at an unbelievable speed.

During an incident, each time a news report is released, Twitter is overrun with comments and questions relating to it.

Due to Twitter being used a part of everyday life for many people, we found that Twitter seem to have details of an incident before full news reports could get the information to us.

This really highlighted the immense power that social media such as Twitter has, and the impact that it can have on the rest of society.

This was not just with the public, it has an impact within the organisation as Twitter was even used to send out a wide reaching message to staff alerting them to the problem and asking the not to go directly to the scene but to head into a station so staff could be organised properly.

If I could not see it before, I can truly see the power in social media now.

Pictured are officers and staff from around GMFRS at a briefing during the training exercise

Apprentice Greg Brunt goes back to his roots and inspires Prince's Trust group

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Greg Brunt:

As a modern apprentice for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service we believe we have a duty to help guide young people like ourselves along a similar path.

In order to do this we are trying to get out into the communities to visit numerous groups that the fire service either run or support.

As a former Stockport Prince's Trust team member, I wanted to go back to my roots and start helping youngsters within my own community.

I met up with the Prince’s Trust team which is the 10th one to run in Stockport to explain my own experience as an Apprentice Community Safety Advisor and provide guidance on how they can follow a similar path. It was a great visit as the team were really interactive and showed a very keen interest in the work we do.

We discussed the future aim of the fire and rescue service to bring in more apprentices over the coming months and provided them with some information on what to expect when applying.

We discussed the option for some team members to try and get work experience within the service while on their Prince's Trust course. While there we had a bit of fun discussing their current plans for community projects and I was quizzed as to how my team had done it - I also managed offer some guidance when requested on the best way to approach the one they had picked.
I gave a brief outline of my day-to-day role in the organisation, explaining about the many homes I had visited, all challenges we are currently involved in and community events that I had not only helped to set up, but that I also enjoyed running.

Lastly, I explained what I wanted from my apprenticeship: to become a full time employee of the fire service and expand on my knowledge and experiences that I have thoroughly enjoyed so far since the apprenticeship started in October.

I would like to thank Matty and Charlie for allowing me the opportunity to discuss my apprenticeship experience so far and I hope that the group found the talk beneficial for following with their own Manchester Fire journey in the future.

We will be continuing to visit groups for the Prince's Trust and also the fire cadets to talk about our experiences and set up the next intake of apprentices for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service.

Frankie gives GMFRS staff the lowdown on cerebral palsy

Apprentice Community Safety Advisor, Francesca Martinelli

As someone who has a mild form of Cerebral Palsy, I thought it was important for me to educate Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service staff on the subject and give them my own personal perspective, share my experiences and speak about how CP affects me in day to day life.

Along with Caroline Fahy, who works in equality and diversity, I was able to plan the presentation, by researching a bit more about CP - because even I’m not an expert!

After a Month of planning, and putting together a PowerPoint Presentation we finally got the go ahead for the pilot presentation to be delivered in the community room at Manchester Central Fire Station.

Having done the pilot I think it went amazingly well. Everyone came out better informed said I was brilliant!

I look forward to travelling to other boroughs and educating the masses!

Caroline and I have worked really hard on this presentation, but I don’t want to give too much away, because I will be coming to your borough with my presentation soon.

Apprentice Community Safety Advisor: Francesca Martinelli

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Bethany Pearson:

During a recent visit I removed 13 cube adaptors from within one house!

As you all should know, we don't like cube adaptors (even more so if they aren’t fused) so to discover these 13, that were also plugged into long adaptors, would be enough to give anyone in the fire service a heart attack!

To avoid any temptation of using them again, the man asked if we could remove them from his home.

I challenge anyone to beat our record!

Don’t forget:

1.    If you have cube adaptors get them removed! (long adaptors are a lot safer)

2.    Anything that produces its own heat NEEDS its own socket

3.    Do not plug adaptors into other adaptors (a plug socket is only designed to take 13amps)

My day visiting the Darul Uloom Islamic College...

Post by Apprentice Community Safety Advisor Bethany Pearson:

On Wednesday, February 27, my colleague and I attended a joint visit with the Ramsbottom fire crew to familiarise themselves with the Darul Uloom Islamic Male College and check the ground plans they have of the building.

We thought this would be a good opportunity to learn a little bit about their culture too.

As we walked through the building barefoot, we had the chance to see what their days consisted of.

The boys who attended started the college from Year 8 at school and the eldest that attended Darul Uloom could go up to their mid-20’s.

About 10 per cent of the boys were international students and the rest have come from all over the UK to attend the college and live here.

Darul Uloom is so large and so populated that I can’t believe I’ve never actually seen or heard of this college until now.

Even though I live in Ramsbottom, I’ve only ever had the odd glance of the building when walking up towards Peel Tower.

It was a great opportunity to explore the college and meet the students and teachers that live here.

Everyone we met was so welcoming and couldn’t have been happier to give us an insight into their everyday lives.