GMFRS get Apprentices on the road!

Written by Apprentice CSA Chris Toon

As an organisation, GMFRS has provided us with help and support in order to become the first apprentices they have ever taken on.

Within our role we have each been given our own boroughs to cover, each with its own issues and problems to look at and deal with. We have risen to this challenge over the past eight months and we are now dealing with our own jobs and projects. The one thing that has stood in our way and made things difficult to work on our own was the inability to be able to drive.

Fortunately, this has been noticed and GMFRS has now taken the initiative to help their apprentices with their driving lessons. We have just started working with Latics driving school in order to get our apprentices the skills needed to be driving our company vehicles on the roads.

Several of our apprentices who were eligible to drive but had not started yet have since been given the option to start lessons provided by the organisation. These lessons will last for whatever the required period for each apprentice to ensure the GMFRS is happy to send us out into the public in its vehicles in order to deliver our messages.

One of our Apprentices, Christian Krebs stated: "My whole experience with Latics has been really good. The driving instructor is really friendly and explained everything very well. My overall experience has been good and I would recommend them to others."

The option taken by the organisation to support these young individuals in this area shows the willingness and forward thinking they are putting into their youth engagement programs and will help us to reach a wider audience with our work.

Community Safety Team Leader for Salford Borough Stephanie Walters said: "The apprentices have been able to provide additional assistance to the Community safety Team in order to support them in delivering their prevention initiatives. This has allowed our team to become more efficient as we are able to cover a bigger work load. We are looking forward to seeing them driving so they are able to continue setting up and delivering their own projects and really show how much they have learned and developed since joining our team."

The experience so far with Latics has been a very successful one due to the helpful nature of the staff and patience shown with our new drivers. Hopefully this programme will continue into the future to help any future apprentices show fully how much they can bring to the organisation.

We are now just looking forward to watching our apprentices get out in the community and really start being able to help make a difference in delivering our fire prevention messages.