Child Fire Safety Awareness: Managing Resources Effectively - Report Example

CHILD FIRE SAFETY AWARENESS Managing resources effectively 1. Introduction Fire prevention programmes is always at the heart of the Fire and Rescue Service work thus development of effective partnership programmes within communities is a major concern for the fire and rescue service. One of these concerns is working for children and young people to increase fire safety awareness and reduce deliberate fires. Following the Fire and Rescue National Framework 2008-11, the FRS is focus on delivering real change through effective partnership with local people in a range of community safety initiatives. These include working together with partners to address common problems and targeting high-risk groups such as children in primary school (Communities and Local Government 2008b, p.14). The proposed project seeks to improve fire safety awareness among young children of primary school age in the City of York based on the objectives contained in the latest risk management plan that emphasizes the need to minimise risk of fire to the public through community safety, fire protection, and partnership programmes. Ensure delivery of service through highly skilled and flexible workforce and take into account good operation practice and value for money. More importantly, as part of the strategy to prevent fatalities and injuries from fire, the project support a thematic approach to community fire safety awareness and education that is centred on the need to inform and educate groups considered to be most at risk (North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority 2010, p.6). Through the community safety partnerships established in the City of York, the project intends to provide enhancement by working with local partners particularly those that linked to education. Since the FRS is in a unique position within the community that could engage with young people positively, the project is confident that it can deliver initiatives such as local intervention and schools fire safety education programme. 2. Staff Recruitment Process In educating primary school children on fire safety, the project intends to recruit to new full time staff as community safety practitioners. The recruitment process will begin with determining the exact roles and responsibilities of the required community safety officers. At the minimum, the selected community safety practitioner should effectively work with school management and primary school children. More importantly, they should act as a reliable source of safety advice and guidance. The community safety practitioners in mind are expected to take part in continuous training and learning programmes within the FRS and the community. With the support of frontline fire fighters, the chosen community officers will deliver fire safety education programmes to all primary schools in the City of York. They will conduct fire safety awareness activities and will be working with children most of the time. In compliance with the FRS policy that all vacancies will be advertised in a way that it can be seen by those interested in applying and details of the role, requirements, and selection process should be easily accessible to all prospective applicants, the new staff will be recruited through print advertisement, specifying the minimum requirements and qualifications of applicants. However, to avoid the high cost of one week advertising, the project intends to include a one line informational add in the fire safety awareness initiative press release that will be distributed to local newspapers. For example, “The fire safety programme for children need two qualified community safety practitioners, please contact the FRS HR Manager”. Another option is to place and ad in the FRS website and invites applicants to visit the website for details. This way, the project can obtain the best value for money as specified in the in the IRMP and National Procurement for Fire and Rescue Service by using the existing website and inviting applicants through a free press release. Through proper planning, review, and taking into account the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of actions proposed, the project can struck a reasonable balance between risk and service delivery objectives and manage resources in a cost effective way. Recognising that the most important resource of the fire and rescue service is its people, the project needs to follow employment policies, procedures, and processes so it can recruit people with the right skills and potential. The new recruits are expected to meet the standards of honesty and integrity to ensure the trust and confidence of the community. The project bear in mind the development of these recruits and the need to support them in the best way possible –fairly treated and respected. In order to comply with the National Framework’s equality and diversity requirements, the National Fire Service Core Values and Personal Qualities and Attributes, the project will allow qualified applicants to take part regardless of gender, ethnicity, and colour. After making sure that the project’s recruitment plan complies with employment and equality legislation and the FRS equality and diversity policy, all applicants will be given fair and equal access to the details of the requirements for the post of community safety officer. Applicants will be shortlisted through written examination and interview and those who will pass will be given an employment contract based on existing recruitment policy of the FRS with a salary range from £20 to £27/hour (approximate value only..see table in section 3). In compliance with the commitment to support new and old employee’s transition into the workplace and to maintain a safe working environment, the new recruits will be inducted following the method provided in recruitment, selection, appointment & promotion guidelines of the FRS. Since these new community fire safety practitioners will be working with children most of the time and will act as a role model for children in primary school, they will be introduced to partner schools. They will be given a clearly defined objectives and their work will be regularly reviewed. Their performance will be measured against their effectiveness in pursuing their objectives. 3. Other Programme Resources To implement community fire safety awareness effectively, the new staff should be given enough resources to support their work. These resources at the minimum should include their uniform, service vehicle, communication equipment, portable computers, projectors, demo materials, fosters, booklets, and other resources that may required. As a member of the FRS, they will be given a standard uniform, identification card, and other standard requirements. Moreover, since their work involves hands-on activities at schools and participation with other community partner’s initiative, one service vehicle will be allocated for this purpose. This service vehicle is not necessarily new as any available vehicle (except the fire engine and speciality equipment) in the fire and rescue service may be assigned for community fire safety awareness work. Communication equipment such as radio may allocated for reporting and monitoring purposes. Computers may provided in order to enable community fire safety practitioners to create presentations, correspondence, and other materials necessary in the performance of their work. Moreover, the same portable computers along with LCD projectors will be use in school presentations. Demo materials such as sample fire extinguisher, fire hoses, lighter, matches, smoke detectors, alarms, and so on may be provided by the FRS. The design of the awareness foster is a coordinated effort between community partners and the FRS, but FRS may carry printing and other associated cost. If this is the case, then expenses from these materials will be charge to the project. The cost of these materials and equipment may vary depending on the quantity required and procurement will be subject to the guidelines of the Procurement Strategy for the Fire and Rescue Service. Options available to achieve best value may be employed such as sharing resources with others or use existing contract for low cost/low risk commonly used items. As much as possible, the project intends to favour bids that offer the optimum combination of whole life cost thus low priced items is not necessarily the best value for money. Acquiring these resources may take time and for this reason, the project intends to procure them as soon as possible through the organisation’s existing procurement method. The list of requirements may be submitted for management approval and subsequently, endorse to the procurement department for action. The list of equipment and materials may be prioritised by their strategic importance to ensure that all urgent requirements come first. This strategy would enable the project to start as early as possible and make use of new employee immediately. Following best practices, procurement of the requirements must be undertaken at the level most likely to achieve maximum efficiency and prioritization can help the organization achieve it. Table 3-1 Item Cost Quantity Total Comments Community Fire Safety Practitioner £27 (per hour) 2 157,680 Annually Vehicle £17,000 1 £17,000 One time purchase Portable Computer £500 1 £500 One time purchase LCD Projector £500 1 £500 One time purchase Flyers & Booklets £12 /130gsm 10 £120 Quarterly Other equipments £300 £300 Cost will be zero or less if existing equipment from FRS will be use 4. Job Descriptions As discussed earlier in the recruitment process, the applicants will be subject to the policies of the FRS and national requirements. The job description of the new staff will be based on the FRS role maps and nationally defined Fire Service Core Values including Personal Qualities and Attributes. In view of these requirements, coordination with external bodies such as the Criminal Records Bureau may be required particularly when the new community fire safety practitioners will be working with young schoolchildren. The bureau can provide organizations like the FRS verification services for people being recruited into sensitive positions. This will ensure that the organization will make safer recruitment decisions for the project and avoid further implications caused by falsely recruiting criminals into positions dealing with highly vulnerable children. The cost of such service is £26 for standard check and £36 for enhanced check. Aside from background verification, the new employee would undergo health and other assessment in accordance with organisational requirements and nationally defined standards. The new employee must satisfy minimum standard determined by the organisation taking to account existing occupational standards and guidance at the time of recruitment. In return, the organisation will make sure that no discrimination occurs and equality and diversity strategies are applied correctly. 5. Monitoring and Evaluating the Project The project will be monitored and evaluated with S.M.A.R.T, thus the project objectives must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-related. The main goal of the project is to build fire safety awareness to children in primary school and for this reason, the success of this project will measured by the amount of awareness children gained from the project. Being specific can help the project progress without unnecessary confusion that may cause delay and failure. It is also important that the team is able to measure success of the project thus there must be certain points in the project are clearly defined. For instance, is the project successful in getting the attention of children in the first week of actual fire safety demonstration? If so then the project is in the right path, otherwise there must be some changes to be done. The results of every activity in the project must be measurable through some means (Heldman 2003, p.85) thus the project will have to monitor every activity. As mentioned earlier, the progress of each activity will be measured through assessment of the outcome of the particular activity. For example, are the majority of schoolchildren able to answer questions related to the leaflet distributed? If yes then activity is a success otherwise, the activity is a failure. Implementing a project requires specific and realistic targets (Atkinson 2001, p.36) thus the team should ensure that their objective is realistically achievable. For example, it is unrealistic that the project team that will raise awareness among children will cover a hundred schools a week. Clearly, the most appropriate target would be based on the capacity of two-community safety practitioner, which can only cover at least 4 to 5 schools a week. Since any project should have a time frame to follow (Heldman 2003, p.86), the project will have its own project schedule containing the task, duration, progress, and target dates for each activity. For example, if the goal is realistic, an activity can be scheduled to start and end on specific date. 6. Policies As discussed earlier, there are number of policies that must be complied before and during the implementation of the project. Primarily, the existing policies of the fire and rescue service regarding recruitment, project implementation, community partnership, and performance monitoring and evaluation will be followed. These include complying with the fire and rescue service vision, mission, and corporate plans. In addition, the project will ensure that it complies with the Corporate Equality Policy, IRMP, Procurement, and Core Values. Complying with these policies is very important, as the project will be undertaken along with children of very young age. During the project implementation, policies regarding community partnership and performance monitoring and evaluation will be the primary guide of the project. More importantly, the activities within the project will be focused on preventing incidents through fire safety education as specified in the organisation’s IRMP. The project will also focus on the close relationship with other agencies and local communities as it continues to reduce the risks and prevent loss of lives. In general, the project intend to use and comply to all existing national, organisation, and local community policies to ensure that none of its activities breach any rules or move away from acceptable practices. 7. Application of the Principles of Operational Assurance In implementing the project, the team and the fire and rescue service itself may find it necessary to know how well they are performing. For this reason, the principles of operational assurance may be applied to enable the fire and rescue service as a whole to check their performance against several factors. For this project, the outcome may be compared against the objectives of the IRMP or the extent to which the community fire safety activities influences and contribute to the success of operational fire and rescue service delivery. Operation assurance may be also gained from knowing the extent to which operational resources are being utilized and allocated or how effective the policy, plans, procedures are being implemented. 8. Conclusion In educating schoolchildren about fire safety, the project requires a number of resources that include hiring community fire safety practitioners, vehicle, equipment, and programme materials. The recruitment of these personnel must conform to the existing recruitment policy of the organisation and objectives set in the National Framework for Fire and Rescue and latest IRMP. Their job description should be based on organisational role maps and nationally defined Fire Service Core Values, background checks, and health examinations. Similarly, the procurement of materials and equipment needed by the project should go through procedures and processes being implemented within the organisation and specifications contained in the Procurement Strategy for Fire and Rescue Service. Monitoring and evaluation of project performance can be done through SMART project management to ensure measurability and achievability of the project objectives. The principle of operational assurance can be applied by checking the project performance against the IRMP and the extent to which resources is being utilized. 9. Reference list Atkinson J., 2001, Developing teams through project-based learning, Gower Publishing, Ltd., UK Communities and Local Government, 2008a, Fire and Rescue Service: Equality and Diversity Strategy 2008-2018, Communities and Local Government Publications, UK Communities and Local Government, 2008b, Fire and Rescue Service National Framework 2008-2011, Communities and Local Government Publications, UK Heldman K. 2003, Project management jumpstart, John Wiley and Sons, US North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority, 2010, Integrated Risk Management Plan 2010-2013, NYFRA, UK North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, 2005, Recruitment, Selection, Appointment, & Promotion Policy, NYFRS, UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005a, Operational Assurance, Fire and Rescue Service Circular, ODPM Publications, UK, p.1-9 Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005b, National Procurement Strategy for the Fire and Rescue Service 2005-2008, ODPM Publications, UK Read More