Volunteers meeting a required percentage for Call Outs & Training

[BundyBear]

Volunteers meeting a required percentage for Call Outs & Training?

This is the question I ask, personally I think all operational fire fighters in the CFS should meet 1/3 of all call outs and training. Maybe something similar to what the retained MFS fire fighters have to meet whatever that maybe.

The reason I make this statement at some brigades fire fighters are lapse at their commitment to their brigades and if they dont attend training and call outs regularly how are they possibly maintaining a competent skill level, learning new skills and keeping up to speed with operational changes. You can spend ages training but rolling down the street to the real thing does anything else compare?

With what the service is expected to provide to the community now days and all the skill levels required to be maintained should we expect something like this? Should bridage Captains have the power to enforce such an idea?

[Pipster]

Always an interesting topic this....

If we set, say a certain percentage - lets say 40 % of calls outs must be attended, for a person to remain active, we face the following problem:

Brigade A, a rural brigade is called to, and attends a total of 5 calls in a year.    All members of the brigade (all 7 of them!) attend all 5 calls, meaning all members attend 100 % of the calls.

Brigade B, and busy urban fringe brigade, attends 400 calls a year.  One of their members attends 100 of those calls, meaning that member only attends 25% of the calls of the brigade.


But, brigade A members with 100 % attendance rate only do 5 calls, but are considered to be active, but the member of brigade B, who attends 100 calls (eg 95 more than brigade A) is not considered active under a system such as this.

So, by simply setting an particular percentage of callouts to attend, we create a very inequitable system.

So, if we were to set limits, it would need to take into account far more than simple numbers.....

Pip

[misterteddy]

it can never just be about numbers (no pun intended fella  ) 65 stop calls a competent operator doth not make

It's about people and their individual skill levels and knowledge bases and everyone is different. At the end of the day, leave the bearacracy out of it, forget %, ratios, call rates, attendances, apologies, numbers of deployments etc, the only person that needs to ensure that person is competent to take their place on the appliance is the Captain. Everyone one of you out there who have been in Leadership positions knows who is, and who isnt up to the standard required in your own Brigades.

And with responsibility, comes accountability...

[bajdas]

If you applied this to training night (not social) then it could work.

[Alex]

There should be minimum training standards and attendances... thats for sure.

Policing the number of callout attendances could be tricky.

[Andrew K]

members of our unit have to maintain 75% attendance at training or prove they are still maintaining skills. IF they don't they have 3 months to improve and we also put them through a skills test if they fail they are taken off operational crew until they meet the basic skills, ropes knots, lashings, hand tools etc.