Our prevention, protection, and response functions
Prevention
“Working with the people of Gloucestershire to prevent fires and other emergencies.”
Prevention is a critically important area of work and a statutory duty. The primary intention of the prevention team is to prevent fires and other emergencies from happening, and to reduce the adverse impact if they do occur. Our focus is to identify those who are most at risk of harm and target our prevention activities in an inclusive way. The team works hand in hand with our response and protection colleagues to provide a holistic approach to providing a high performing fire and rescue service for people living, working and travelling through the county, and businesses and communities within it.
Our priority is to engage with and adapt to the changing needs of our community and alleviate common risk factors which are present in a significant number of fires and other emergencies.
We do this through:
- our work in people's homes
- communicating educational/ behaviour-changes messages through our communications channels such as social media, the press, printed literature, and
- in innovative ways via SkillZONE, our interactive life-skills education centre, or
- the local community through our broader prevention work with partners.
Our activity includes preventing dwelling fires and deliberate fires, delivering education to improve road safety and water safety, reducing serious youth violence through interventions, community safety education and working with children who start fires, to change their behaviour.
The following principles underpin our offer to the residents and visitors of Gloucestershire, we will:
- use information from a wide range of sources to identify the factors that place people at the greatest risk of being injured in a fire and use this information to reduce risk.
- make every contact count by effectively using our resources and signposting to support when needed.
- ensure our staff are appropriately trained to understand the risk factors that increase vulnerability and know how to support the complex needs of vulnerable children, or adults with care and support needs.
- collaborate with partners from across statutory and third sector organisations to maximise the use of resources, and to ensure we are effective at identifying and reducing risk.
- work with communities to co-produce activity wherever possible; working "alongside" and "with" to build safer communities and recognise existing strengths.
- ensure that prevention activity offers equality of access, removing or overcoming barriers to access for underserved groups, and making sure that our offer is inclusive of our diverse community.