First Responders

Launch of Ettington Community First Responder Scheme

After several months of preparation, a small group of parish volunteers is launching an Ettington Community First Responder Scheme on 1st June. The scheme will provide an emergency first aid response service in Ettington and the surrounding area. This service will be provided by Community First Responders who will be trained and supported by West Midlands Ambulance Service. (The ambulance service in Warwickshire is provided by West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust).

The Community First Responder (CFR) scheme is a national initiative. There are currently around 370 Community First Responders now operational in Warwickshire. The scheme provides an early response to life-threatening emergencies ahead of the arrival of paramedics. This early response is particularly important in village locations. In some cases, providing the correct first aid in the first few minutes can make all the difference to a patient.

Once launched, the Ettington CFR scheme will provide cover for our village and surrounding areas (within a 3-mile radius) similar to that already provided by existing CFR schemes in villages such as Kineton, Long Compton and Ilmington. All the First Responders are undertaking training and examinations by the West Midlands Ambulance Service and hope to eventually be able to provide cover 24 hours a day / 7 days a week. On receipt of high-priority emergency call from Ettington, the ambulance operations centre will despatch an ambulance crew (as normal) and will also alert the duty (on-call) First Responder in Ettington at the same time.

First Responders will be equipped with life-saving equipment but the vast majority of this has to be funded by fund-raising within the community itself; only a minimal amount is provided by the Ambulance Service. It costs about £1,100 for one set of CFR equipment.

A separate, but related, initiative is also underway to equip the village with two public-access defibrillators and special green boxes to hold them. The Parish Council is funding these. You will see these appearing in the village soon.

We would like to ask for your help in four ways:

1. Thanks to some initial funding, we have some equipment to get the scheme started but we will need to raise a lot more money; not only to buy additional equipment for our existing kits but also to buy further complete First Responder sets as more volunteers join us. We estimate that we need a further £2,000 to get to the stage that we have three complete sets of equipment. So, when you see the Community First Responder collection boxes in the village, if you could make a small donation it would really help. A donation of £1 per person in the village (We are part of a recognised charitable organisation and Ettington CFR scheme has its own bank account).

2. There are only four of us in the scheme at the moment. By comparison, other communities have 15 - 20 volunteers. If you would like to become trained as a First Responder, please contact us on the numbers below. In particular, we would like to get a First Responder based in Pillerton Priors to enhance our response time in that village.

3. We need to organise regular fund-raising events in order to keep the scheme going. If you would like to join us as a fundraiser, we'd really love to have you on the team. We will have a lot to do just operating the scheme so we'd really appreciate help with the fundraising.

4. If you own or manage a local business and feel that you can sponsor the team in any way, we'd love to hear from you. Where possible, we will aim to have your business name/logo displayed.

You can find out more about the West Midlands Ambulance Service CFR Scheme at: www.wmas.nhs.uk/AtYourService/CommunityFirstResponders/tabid/66/Default.aspx

The Ettington Community First Responder website is: http://www.ettingtoncfr.org.uk

Thank you.

For more details, please contact:

Sarah Neale: 748272 Zarig Prothero: 740378 Russ Inman: 740034 Paul Mulligan: 740962

Or email us at: info@ettingtoncfr.org.uk