Death in service toolkit update

If a firefighter tragically died on duty, how would you deal with the consequences? Here, Bridget Aherne at Nottinghamshire FRS updates members on one of this year's major workstreams, which will hopefully be of benefit to fire service communication teams across the country.

The idea for a 'Death In Service' toolkit was spawned at last year's FirePRO conference when the unconference sessions revealed that lots of services were working on lots of different materials. A note on the forum then led to a number of people sharing their policies, procedures and other materials to help communicators who might ever face such a situation.

From the discussions on the forum, a group met at Staffordshire FRS in April to coordinate all the materials. The group included comms professionals from five different services with input from many who have sadly had first hand experience. We decided that the toolkit will take a step-by-step approach for people to follow a guide of comms prompts, tools and advice from those who’ve lived through it so some useful documents and information which is at people’s finger tips if they ever need it.

Further work then took place to assemble the tool kit at South Yorkshire FRS this summer and its now being edited to be exclusively presented and tested at the FirePRO conference this month.

This kind of work benefits everyone, but could not have happened if people hadn't stepped forward to get involved.

The people involved in making this work happen included James Morton (Hampshire), Wendy Richings (Greater Manchester FRS), Philip Gillingham (Staffordshire), Kathy Stacey (Lancashire), Steve Chu (South Yorkshire) and myself. Many more  sent documents – too many to name but very grateful as it has all been useful.

We hope you will be at the conference in a few weeks time to hear more about what we have developed.

Your chance to get involved

Following discussions at the recent unconference event in Sheffield, a number of workstreams have been identified which will need the input of volunteers from fire service communication teams around the country. Worksteams are likely to include:

• National campaign collaboration
• Social media and digital strategy
• Engaging staff through change

Getting involved in workstreams like this will give you the opportunity to:

• Further your personal professional development
• Share ideas and best practice with other fire service communicators
• Save your FRS time and money by sharing resources and skills

The volunteering opportunities available will be explained in more detail at this year's conference, where there will also be a chance for you to put your name forward to assist with the topics you are most inerested in.