 Good evening and welcome to another Jam-Packed Volunteer Forum for the first for 2023 January here coming to you from the Druwon West Fibregate in District 9. I'd like to start the Volunteer Forum as always to acknowledge the Aboriginal lands to which we're coming to you from tonight. Recognize the Aboriginal elders past and present and the strength and resilience of Aboriginal people in this land. A lot of good information to come through and as a jam-packed agenda as always. Being the first Volunteer Forum for the year again, wishing everyone that you hope you had a great Christmas and New Year period and it's fantastic to be back with you all doing these forums for what I hope to be another fantastic year. Tonight's forum has a lot of information available but we are focusing primarily on community engagement and how important the preparedness and preparation aspect of the PPR cycle is on our Victorian communities and what CFA is doing to ensure that we're getting the best out of preparing our community so they can really look after themselves in the event of a fire. I have a panel here this evening with us and a couple, Trevor Roberts, the local act for District 9. Welcome Trevor. Thanks Trevor. We've got Bruce Jewel, Alyssa Jans, thank you for coming along this evening. I've got Jude Kennedy, our local MCS, Lucy Seroni from the Head of Community Preparedness and Amborus Raddik Javik. Thank you for coming. I hope I got that right. I get I do apologize. Thank you for coming on the panel this evening and we're going to talk about community preparedness and how important that is. And on the end, Bruce, thank you for coming on this evening and again you've got some great information for us and we're going to talk some really big things. Looking forward to it. It comes to community engagement and the like. We were at Australia Day, on Australia Day we do many things and one of the things that does happen obviously is we acknowledge many award recipients from across many of the community services, the community more generally but also there is a day where we release the Australian Fire Service Metals and CFA recipients were dutifully recognized for their contribution to the Australian Fire Service Metals and tonight I would like to publicly acknowledge our recipients, Mark Cartledge, the Ballarat Fire Brigade. I know Mark exceptionally well and he's absolutely dedication and commitment to rescue road safety and road safety awareness is second to none and likewise he's campaigning and commitment to diversity and inclusion and a child safe environment so congratulations Mark. Neil Marshall from Panton Hill Fire Brigade, 60 years of operational service Neil is both served not only in the brigade environment but also as a board member from 86 to 91 and has really been fundamental in the establishment and the operation of the AEMS system right across CFA. Michael Rowe down at Cape Clear what can I say is an absolute advocate for planned burning and burning and is well-renowned for making sure that our female members really do get involved in in the practice of planned burning and the like particularly through his women burns camp so keep up the great work Michael you're doing a fantastic a lot of work there and well received well deserving of the AFSM. Robert Toddy Small, fern tree gully fire brigade passion for training his commitment and dedication to ensuring that training takes place and always evolving is second to none and that's why he's been awarded and received recognition for that and then we got Ken Stewart from Mount Taylor fire brigade again another passion advocate for mitigation planned burning and preparation so these members right across CFA are real leaders and to be commended and and recognised for their hard work and dedication over many decades to their areas of passion. One final one I will call out you won't see it on the screen there he's been a part of CFA prior to fire services reform and that's a shout out to Assistant Chief Fire Officer Tony O'Day who was also recognised by Australian Fire Service Medal and Tony was spent a lot of his career most of his career in fact with CFA and is very dedicated to ensuring that volunteers are looked after increased in their capability across the service and now he's with fire rescue Victoria looking at interoperability so again making sure that CFA and FRB work together on the fire ground so once congratulations to all our recipients and I wish them all the best and I know they are very proud and I know their families are even prouder of them so if you see them around congratulate them they are well deserving of their awards. I also want to I guess after acknowledging the AFSM just I guess tell our people out there a little bit of sad news some would recall that we recently did a volunteer forum from Ochuca where we talked about their 150 year anniversary and there was one panel in particular Alan Elvie who as many would recall was actually born in the Ochuca Fire Brigade in the station there well unfortunately Alan has just recently passed and I had the honour of attending his funeral with many hundred CFA staff and volunteers to recognise the life and times of Alan and really celebrate the dedication that he has had to the Ochuca community and a passionate advocate for fire investigation I serve a issue to his family on that day an outstanding service medal awarded by the board for his dedication and commitment to fire investigation so I know many would remember him from from the panel so I thought it was worth mentioning that this evening. I gave my commitment in November after we had the training volunteer forum that we would continue to update our members on what's going on in the space of training and Jean true to her word has put together the following package to give you a bit of an update on what they've been working on and what they will be working on and some of their achievements since we last got together and spoke so over to you Jean. Good evening for those of you who haven't met me before I am Jean Dysall the DCO for operational doctrine and training and moving forward from tonight we will be bringing you an update on doctrine and training at every volunteer forum we hope that you find this information informative and insightful 2022 was a very big year for OD&T in terms of operational doctrine we updated and developed over 13 new pieces of doctrine and of course including the driving doctrine which was a very big piece of work for us we also developed and piloted a new process to on how to review maintain and develop our operational doctrine from a training perspective we also released several training courses that are now ready and available for delivery some of those courses just to highlight a few includes rescue operations breathing apparatus classic drive on road hazmat operator and the fire equipment maintenance course we know that many of you have a great interest in the AFAC peer review and from that point of view I'm very happy to report that we had several different meetings with our working groups and consultations if you have a look at the screen now we had over nine sessions with our governance working group more than 14 sessions working on a training pathway framework over two sessions looking at operational capability and three sessions with our diversity and inclusion working group to ensure that all of the work that we've done throughout the 14 recommendations of the AFAC peer review includes diversity and inclusion principles our project control board also met on the 10th of December where they had a look at the considerations provided to them from the AFAC working groups from a learning governance point of view of course this was a very big year for ODNT not only did we upgrade all of the courses from pua 12 to pua 19 we also ensured that there are now more compliant courses in terms of RPL assessments available for you to use and very important for us was the fact that we concluded our VRQA re-registration audit the outcome of the audit is not available yet although it was a very positive experience for the team and I and we are quite sure that we will get a really good audit result in 2023 our priorities have changed and currently our new priorities for January through to February in terms of the operational doctrine space is to have a look at the review and development and maintenance of our operational doctrine and the processes that support those we are also coordinating CFA SME input both from a staff and volunteer perspective into our state common doctrine our J sops and so forth and also important for us is currently to have a look at the asbestos doctrine and how we can update and review that from a training course perspective our focus currently is on respond to urban so for those of you that have used the course before known as our structural firefighting course we also have a very keen and targeted focus on fire investigation courses we are also looking at the last remaining 11 pua 19 compliant RPL assessments and our interest for us is the tree hazard assessor course all of those courses will become our priority for January through to February as far as the AFAC peer review is concerned our current priorities is to update our website information after all of the working group meetings last year we'd also like to finalize the project control board recommendations and host further consultations in particular around our scope of registration and our training pathways within CFA for the learning governance team their priorities remain the audit rectification plan and a clear and targeted focus on language literacy and numeracy for all of our members finally we have a save the date event for all of our trainers and assessors as you know last year we commenced a professional development series for all of our CFA educators and are hoping to kick this off again in February this year we generally run one session on a weekday evening and the same session is repeated on a Saturday morning and to kick us off we will start on the 16th of February the 18th of February with a session regarding assessment practices reassessment assessment decisions and model answers we hope that you save the date and that you make use of those professional development opportunities with us that's all for our update tonight we will also later tonight be showing you and introducing our VM Tech campuses we are hoping to provide a short video of each VM Tech campus and showcase all of their facilities available to you for training purposes that's all from me tonight folks thank you back to you chief thank you Jean for that comprehensive update on what's happening in training it's great to see there's been many movements since we last got to speak to you and that your team have been working so incredibly hard on updating us on on training I look forward to hearing from you next month and what's what has been achieved well ladies and gentlemen I understand that we have had some technical difficulties in the first part of tonight's forum please don't worry we have managed at our end to ensure that there is a clean audio recording so post tonight's forum you will be able to go back and watch the beginning of the of the live stream without interruption or buffering and a huge congratulations to the team behind the desk that were able to quickly resolve the issues to ensure that we're back up streaming at full strength so what what what I did do in the meantime was acknowledge our fantastic AFSM recipients and I do encourage you to go back and watch the first picture here some of their achievements and and some of the dedication that they have been working for a lot of little late news breaking item so since recording that video for us something big has happened in the training space and that is that we actually have now received from the VRQA our full accreditation so our RTO status has been re accredited and recidified for the next five years and congratulations to the training team it's been a tremendous effort and you've managed to to get through that audit fantastically and we're good to go for the next five years so congratulations I know many have worked very very hard across our regions in our districts and our training department to make that happen so Trevor we're in district nine yes tell us about district nine why is it the jewel of the southeast region well it certainly is chief and welcome to district nine we've had a bit of a busy start to the season as well we've had a few burns across our district and now brigades have responded and stood up really really well post COVID it was always a concern how our brigades would come back together and I'm really pleased to say that I could not have been happier of the efforts of our members in in responding there's been some jobs up here in Trafalgar East right down to Agnes down on the South Gippsland and a few a few other minor incidents in between but we're still one of the lowest drought index areas in the state even though coming through winter some of our local farmers have recorded nearly second highest rainfall on record so we've got a significant contrast of drawing so rapidly and our curing really went off real quick this year and your brigades across the district really you know range from your farming type brigades right through to to your urban type brigades and you've got a really good mix of everything in between here aren't you we certainly do we go from the foothills amount borbore to the prom we've got a number of well I won't say the old urban brigade but we've got a number of class five brigades class four brigades so we've got a good mix right across our risk environment right through the typologies in the hills to some of that significant industry dairy industry across our district as well fantastic and thanks for coming on the panel tonight to to ask you the hard questions I'm sure we'll be coming your way out thank you for coming as as always we actually do have a live audience here with us this evening who have come along to watch the forum but also be prepared to come up for all the the hard questions for Trevor who has promised to answer every single one of them but thank you for joining us and we've got members of the ball ball group members of the of the Drew and West Fire Brigade and we even have you know DPC chair Ian here with us tonight so we're amongst a good crowd and some good people and thank you very much for coming along this evening it's greatly appreciated and welcome to to the forum well tonight's forum as I said it was all about community engagement and things that we do to prepare our communities for fire and we've got Bruce here Bruce is our district 27 delegate of the joint community safety committee and there's also the ball ball group community safety coordinator so welcome Bruce thanks very much I bet that keeps you very busy oh it does it does this yes but it's an enjoyable role I mean the community engagement has been a passion of mine for many many years since Black Saturday so I'm happy to invest my time and do what I can to support the brigades in ball ball group awesome now we've got something behind us here this evening we do have tell us all about it well look thanks and first of all thanks chief for allowing the opportunity to talk about this wonderful vehicle and you can see it in the background here and I'll share a bit of experiences that I've found with the vehicle thus far I think I'll start off by saying these vehicles are fantastic having used them on a number of occasions they are a great asset great asset for brigades and really help them engage with their communities the feedback that I've received from members so far is just how simple they are to set up and how easy they are to use I only got a few minutes to talk about the benefits those who know me will know that's a bit of a challenge but I'll do my best to keep for the five minutes so I'll just quickly touch on some of the benefits you know they can be driven on a standard license plus it's an auto so no manual changing of gears it's easy to drive I've driven it a number of times I've driven it down here all the way down to Venus Bay very easy to drive it's got solar panels now the great thing about the solar panels is you don't need that noisy generator to maintain the power and the power is maintained I said before I've used this on two occasions both occasions more than six hours using the TV and all the other electronic facilities basically the batteries hardly even drained at all so it's wonderful that it's got the you know that it has got the solar panels there's a large TV you can't quite see it but it's just in behind whereas it's prepared for fire it's got a HDMI and USB port so you can plug laptop in there you can plug a little memory stick with your videos and here in southeast we're very fortunate that our lovely keks provide us with a memory stick full of videos so we can plug them in and play them to our community there's a filing cabinet in the back that can store all the brochures and information that you need for when you're engaging with the community and once again you know our keks in southeast always make sure that it's fully stocked ready for us to engage with our communities there's multiple USB ports there is multiple so you can charge everything that you have your whether it's your phone your tablet whatever there's a PA system so if you need a little bit help in communicating very simple little box little bluetooth microphone and away you go there's even free wi-fi so yes it comes with its own wi-fi so anyone within 20 meters can hook into the free wi-fi that comes with the vehicle there is plenty of space in there for additional giveaways that you may require i would challenge anyone to try and fill it it it would be very difficult to fill it's just such a wonderful asset pardon me um if you haven't seen one yet right as a wise man once said do yourself a favor contact you know your brigade community safety coordinator or your kek and arrange a demonstration i know once again in southeast here our keks are more than happy to demonstrate it and show it off now i've briefly told you about these wonderful assets what's next so if you're a brigade community safety coordinator or a member of your BMT work together to develop a community engagement plan unless it's going to talk a bit more about that shortly plus also you can jump on to the members online and have a look at a virtual tour so there's a virtual tour that'll walk you through the actual vehicle i've been asked a few times where can they be used basically anywhere anywhere where you're engaging with the community so i talked before about you know having a plan for the 2023 how you're going to engage with community and then look about how you're going to be using the vehicle but demand is high at the moment um i would encourage you to plan ahead and book it ahead i can tell you now in southeast region the vehicles here have been used on 50 occasions already and it's just wonderful to see these vehicles out there so i would encourage you to book early now i'm sure there's plenty of questions chief so i'm i'm sure you know the opportunity to ask questions later but i would encourage you to ask any questions at the end so thank you very much chief thank you bruce and something it's all about it um so trevor how important is it to have resources like this available in the district jeff we've got to be able to get our message to our communities and we've got to be able to build that resilience in our communities and the best way we can do that is a method of engagement how we sell our story and the takeaways and and what they're going to go home and start to develop their own fire plans because we do have a significant risk particularly to the north of us just here and the foothills around gendavik where bruce and east team is is out there encouraging the communities to to understand those risks that are there a lot of the time throughout the the fire danger period and better prepare them so elissa you're a district 13 delegate on the joint safety uh the joint community community safety committee sorry right a tongue twister there um for the dandenong rangers group as a community safety coordinator um how important is it that cfa has your access to things like the the mews um for you and your community um it's super important dandenong rangers one of the most fire prone areas in the world so it's really important within the dandenong rangers there's 15 brigades um most of our brigades are in extreme risk areas so we need to be able to access as many resources and having these vehicles just means that instead of putting everything into your car and driving to the event or whatever um lugging brochures around everything's there that you need so having everything in that one place um is just really important and the fact that it's so visually beautiful and appealing just draws people to it and it's just something different than the big red truck so people are interested they want to know what it's about and they're sort of coming up and asking all the time which is great fantastic um and bruce if someone wants to get hold of of an mnu and you know start using it how how do I get my hands on one of these um it's actually quite simple all you need to do is just through your brigade community safety corner talk to your local kek right your community education coordinator who will help you um book and arrange um the use of these vehicles but I'll go back to you know when it brigades I would encourage them to plan ahead so think ahead um demand is high but certainly just contact your keks that's all they're wonderful support now well thank you bruce for coming along this evening and telling us all about us it's a fantastic piece of equipment and tool for our brigades to use right across the state and it looks fantastic and a big shout out to everyone involved in the the mobile engagement unit project has done a fantastic job there's been a lot of consultation with many departments right across cfa whether it be our community engagement teams our fleet and engineering teams it's been a collaborative effort to get to where we are today and it's a fantastic investment in our Victorian communities well ladies and gentlemen I am aware and I do know that we are continuing to have technical difficulties this difficulty this evening with buffering and some connection issues we're going to continue to run the forum as we are right now to ensure that it is recorded we are getting a clean record so that you will have the ability to go back and view this after after the forum so big apologies to everyone who is trying to watch it this evening but can't I do encourage you to log on to members online and be able to watch the forum at a later time but we will continuing we're continuing on we will continue to push through so thank you to anyone that wants to try and bear with us as we try to resolve these technical issues So Trevor again I guess as the local ACFO for for District 9 one of the things I like to do I guess when I was talking to operational leaders to get an understanding of I guess one of some of the challenges in their area if we were to have a fire right here right now in District 9 where would you not like it to be and why probably about where we no chief we've got a lot of communities as I said earlier along those foothills of the rangers particularly to the north of us where we are getting those high level drought indexes that are probably some of the highest in the state and their communities in there that often only have one or two ways out so to us they're not the places where we want fires to start however we do know traditionally we're going to get the the bad days with the northerly and the northwesterly winds that will severely impact it and we sent it again with the bonnet fire but we had some good experience people in the fire ground that actually witnessed fire behaviour from from previous years particularly around Black Saturday to have that good fire ground knowledge so more importantly why we've got to get that community message out particularly to leave early because when you've got only one or two roads into some of these communities that message is so important for the safety of the community absolutely and and Boris we have you this evening to to talk about the community engagement guidelines tell us about the guidelines and how they help you know Trevor and his district and Brigades prepare our communities thank you chief and good evening everyone both here during West Brigade and those who watch us online so I'm pleased to talk to them about community engagement guidelines and I'm pretty sure they are valuable resource both for the brigades and also regions and districts in order to help our communities get prepared for fire now we all know that engaging with community members is critical for CFA to achieve our mission of protecting lives and property by building those skills transferring knowledge and building some long lasting connections we really want to enhance the sense of sharing responsibility so that we work together with communities to achieve that sort of prevention and community preparedness goal if you will now we will probably all agree it's easier said than done and I appreciate all the challenges and it's sometimes it's not one size fits all so we might need to adapt and tailor some of the messages and programs to the local communities but again community engagement guidelines do provide that important platform as they are pretty much a how-to guide comprising of all the relevant tools templates national standards and international best practice around community engagement you can always also find some learnings from the previous fires but you can also find more information about our compliance requirements such as child safety privacy OHS risks and and so on obviously you you are in the unique position as CFA members to contribute to a community engagement and help the communities be fire ready so I trust that this is a great resource that will help you first initiate but then also plan deliver and report on community engagement we all know that when we approach these activities you know we wonder what is the problem we want to resolve here what are the actions that would lead to the desired outcomes and also what are the resources we need whether it's infrastructure equipment vehicle as Bruce mentioned with the MEU's there is all sorts of resources but also on the day how do you get that message across so that it resonates and sticks with community members and then they talk to their neighbors friends to prepare the fire plan so that they are ready and confident if the incident occurs so within the guidelines you you'll find the within the structure pretty much the four categories within initiate plan deliver and report what some of the processes are and some of you will find some of these processes already familiar which is fine for others it will be a bit of a brush up of the current knowledge but for some new members it can be also the new the new learnings and the new content that they need to navigate as we all appreciate there is lots of intricacies around you know how we do business in CFA but I'm pretty confident that with this resource will help achieve our strategic goal which is putting communities at the center of what we do and the main premise of the guidelines is actually that community engagement is something that everybody at CFA can do no matter with your paid staff member or volunteer if you're new or you've been here for a long time they do provide that sort of background knowledge and and the tools that you need to do community engagement they also quality assurance mechanism for us because we want to ensure that what we do really hits the mark and is right for our communities and when you go and check the guidelines you'll find also some important checklist there so if you're not sure you know where the certain approach is right or if you've done you know the right thing you can always go back to the guidelines and and check actually what's what's required and as with any other activities I would encourage you to talk to your brigade members collaborate get the access through guidelines through your local CAC they would be more than happy to assist you and there is expectation from now on that they are followed and adhered to in all community engagement activities but look we'll closely watch the space and we also open for the feedback because this is the first iteration and we understand if we might have missed something so there is also an opportunity for you to tell us if something didn't work if you want a bit more detail we are more than happy to embed that in the next iteration and really help you add value and make the difference over there in the communities oh that's awesome so if I was a brigade that wanted to get into to doing community engagement it's probably a really good place to start to get the guidelines and understand you know some of those processes that you said that plan do act and report and it's really good you know helping you helping you along the way and I guess how important how important you know is having guidelines available for our brigades undertaking some of this valuable work you know Alyssa oh it's super important I mean it sets the standard of where we want you know where CFA would like brigades to be with their communities you know community engagement it's part of our core service delivery in everything that we do so we're always constantly always engaging with our communities and having a set of guidelines just helps everybody to sort of get on the same page and and it's really helpful especially for brigades who are just new to community engagement yeah and it really helps solidify I guess because community engagement programs are you know and not you know whack together and just thrown out there or add a bit of water and something will grow like they're evaluated their you know research they generally have grounding in in good research I know we're going to have Lucy on the panel soon and I know that's some of her passion about community engagement evaluations and lessons and learning and putting that into into practice and these guidelines really do help us you know put that into action don't they 100% absolutely so I really hope that they will do as I said we are still open for feedback but yeah they're a great resource they've been actually created in consultation with our members so you know we try to embed all the things that matter while they might look a bit comprehensive at the first glance because there is quite a few pages there to navigate we're also preparing a bit of an overview and postcard so that members can find the key information on a few pages in the key context that they can reach out to. So Alyssa Bruce let's talk about your experience and different communities that where you've been we've been doing this so talk me through I guess what have been some of the hard head communities that you had to deal with where it's a little bit it'll never happen to me or yeah don't tell me I know but have you managed to crack through breakthrough and start to engage with the community and get them thinking about preparing and fire safety you want to go first I should go first great question chief um a lot of our brigade members will have experienced members of their own community who've been around for a long time so they might have experienced fire within that area or in other areas and they may think that they've seen it all and they know it all that you know everything you know the environment's changing constantly a lot of things are changing our programs and services are being updated on a regular basis so there's always there's always something new for people to discover and I suppose being able to you know utilize what goes on in the community without having to drag people to the fire station which we've traditionally done in the past you know meeting the community where they're at so working with other local community groups making sure that you've got a really good brigade community engagement plan and it's something that the fantastic team at headquarters have developed over the last year is a community engagement plan template which you can find on the content portal so you can go onto the content portal there's a special tab that's been created for brigade community safety coordinators so you can find the planning template in there there's even a video that tells you everything you need to do and if brigades are able to go through with their BMT and all their brigade members really um and go through each of the sections it really helps brigades to understand what sort of you know engagement activities they could do who they should be considering not just one particular group of people but you know all the people within the community and remembering that we are the community so we have that experience but um yeah I think it's the hardest the challenge is getting people to come back year after year because some people think oh I've been to one meeting or I've been to one session so I know everything nothing's going to change so no and the importance of promoting our events that's one of the you know the biggest issues for brigades is getting it out there that we've got events on so whether or not that's on our Facebook pages doing newsletters or letterbox drops using the what's on section of the cfa website so everybody sort of can go to there and see but um yeah it's challenging but lots of fun Bruce what about you I was just thinking um you know you just got to chip away um for some people um you know it's just not going to get it done one two three four visits some people require a number of visits um for some people we're actually talking a little bit even about changing of attitudes and people's attitudes don't change overnight so I would encourage brigades if they're coming across people that are sort of you know they it's not going to happen to me oh this is never going to happen to me just chip away just chip away keep talking to them keep engaging if anything try and encourage their neighbours to talk to them um often people will listen to their neighbours um and just chip away and and also don't think that this is going to happen overnight getting people to change their attitudes will take time at drill west we've been doing it here for probably nearly eight years and um we're still on a journey so there's a so I you know not many people would probably know why my you know my background is in community safety uh in New South Wales in in my district in my district time um now there's a little bit of a special recipe uh for for dealing with communities and trying to to do the community engagement aspect and there's there's three um there's three words really um yeah keeping it tailored you know keeping it simple and relevant uh for that local community uh and that's a really you need to understand the community first before you go do that don't you yeah absolutely and there's you know there's so many tools available you know the community engagement portal um via members online um site it's got everything that brigades need so it's got a section for all the different programs that cfa have and the services as well as all the resources for those all the publications the current publications brochures that are available um as well as all the multimedia social media tiles videos everything you need so really encouraging all of your members um in your brigade to look at the community engagement portal because that's where you'll find everything it's you know it's the one-stop shop and I'd also just like to um have a plug to the state the um headquarter community engagement team for the last brigade magazine three pages of community engagement with a whole table about all the difference programs and services um that cfa are offering at the moment so I encourage everybody to read that thank you and I'm sure the gang back in HQ are appreciative of of the plug no fair thing now um Boris I'm pretty sure we'll find something else on the uh on the intranet there in the community engagement section and that's the the capability framework tell us all about what is the framework and how does it relate to what we're talking about tonight that's right look that's uh just uh another exciting project we've been working on in community engagement uh headquarters team and while the the word uh framework might sound a bit mouthful what we really mean by that is a really great tool in community preparedness and the prevention that help us build consistent and straightforward uh capability within our community and among the members um so the framework has been created in consultation with members obviously similar uh two guidelines uh but it is quite different uh in terms of the nature in itself because the the framework embeds the training pathways which have been developed in conjunction uh with the framework and uh the pathways actually describe what training is available and at what level uh while the capability framework on the other side sets some desired abilities the skills and the knowledge of different uh roles for community engagement for example a brigade member a brigade community safety coordinator a group community safety coordinator and a presenter um so when it comes to implementation of this framework the capability uh team has really taught this true and created uh three uh levels which are which will be built into our learning management system uh the first level is a communicator so it's pretty much uh the training about the basic communication skills uh so that you understand what's the community engagement how to go about community engagement understanding fire is contextualizing that as you said it rightly before chief it it's it's really about tailoring uh that activity at the local level and the understanding uh the needs and you might wonder now uh what what will uh this uh this sort of training uh help you uh undertake and what what sort of capability will be built once you complete it and get indoors so it's pretty much uh the training that helps you uh with uh home visits we are talking here about one-on-one sessions like paths and also fire uh fire safe uh safe kits which has been uh another popular uh program of cfa now as we are moving we deem that try training pathway the next uh level is level two or the presenter level and that's the one that we've spent quite a bit of time recently in terms of revisiting that package most of you will associate that with uh a collab training package and now we call it presenter package just because we've actually decided to uh split their role and have a sort of a presenter role if you will and then the facilitator role which corresponds to the level three within this training pathway so once you take a presenter training then you're able to actually deliver fire safety essentials which has been another flagship cfa program and you're also getting a bit more sophisticated skills in terms of you know monitoring and evaluation reviewing reporting on the programs and so on and at that level there is some important resources here for bsc sc's and gsc sc's and i think the uh i'm struggling a bit with acronyms as well and elissa i think you did me a favor and you mentioned some of those already on the content portal so they are indeed available through uh members online and on the uh learning hub uh so we are talking here about a brigade community engagement uh planned so there is a template and our colleague jackie has been socializing this template for quite a while now at the regional volunteer forum so for you who attended it them last year you would be quite familiar with them but sometimes you might also wonder what sort of information you put in there who you need to ask for assistance so there is a nice video tutorial that uh covers those topics and there is also another resource which is a e-learning module that's that's currently being built they actually two e-learning modules one of them for community safety coordinators and explains their roles and responsibilities and the second one is pretty much about the risk-based community engagement planning process which which should help this template and the implementation i might have missed just at the level one i would like to go quickly go go back in terms of the module that we have available there and that's intro to community engagement we've had quite a bit of popularity here more than 500 completions of this training but we really encourage members to jump on learning hub and complete this e-learning module if you haven't already because i'm sure you'll find some great information there and in conjunction with guidelines and some other resources that will really enhance your capability to deliver community engagement as we are moving towards you know the more complex programs we are going to build the advanced module which is a dead level tree for facilitators and that module will help our presenters pretty much deliver programs like emergency preparedness advice service community fire guard also fire planning workshops that that that you have been working on elisa so it's really exciting journey and something to mention is like as members you are not required to go through all these levels it's really optional as we are moving towards volunteer led service at the delivery we obviously want people to undertake more of this training and build their capability but if you reckon you know you're comfortable at level one for the time being that's fine and maybe at the future stage you might move to the following levels but yeah another great project and again i encourage you to reach out to your local keks and find out a bit more awesome information there about not only the engagement guidelines with the capability framework as well one of the the things that i find from time to time is yeah cfa we report quite regularly to government on the great work that our volunteers do in our communities doing community engagement and preparedness works and the like and some of the and rolling out some of these these programs there either be you know smoke alarm installation or you know doing some home fire safety visits property advice property advice is absolutely so elisa one of the things one of the frustrations i have sometimes is i reckon our members are out there doing a fantastic job day in day out and sometimes i wonder whether we actually know all of what our members are doing so if we are doing community engagement events and activities out in our communities how best do we record it so that when i get asked the question i can let government know how great a job you're doing absolutely thanks chief there are so many activities that are done at brigades that are not not reported unfortunately and we have an amazing tool at cfa the art reporting tool the activity reporting tool artists call it you can access that again members online the same place where the community engagement portal is there's the activity reporting you can do it on your phone you can do it when you get home from an event you can do it there and then and it basically records everything goes into a central database for the headquarters team to be able to put together little infographics and stuff to present to you and give to the board on a regular basis and it's it's just really important that brigades do report on everything they do and boris mentioned the introduction to community engagement on that lms module and and that's i really would encourage everybody whether or not you're you know into community engagement or not i would encourage all brigade members across the state to do that to understand what is and what isn't community engagement and to make sure that everything that you do that is community engagement is reported because it's it's just so important that we celebrate all the um the successes that we have across our communities and we really need you know headquarters need that data to be able to you know to show what we're doing because our brigades are doing amazing amounts of work and it's sad that it's not all i see so absolutely so the art tool yep the activity report activity reporting tool not not finger painting or anything to do with no van go or anything like that we're not doing arts and crafts no activity reporting of the of the valuable work that definitely and it's also page 34 of the summer brigade magazine there it is there's a little there's a little spiel on that as well so absolutely look it's a fantastic thank you for that information there so we have a question here as i said i do apologize again for anyone that is online that has tried to stay with us the technical difficulties we are continuing to run through uh we do have a clean recording so we will be placing the volunteer forum on members online so you'll be able to to watch tonight's forum from start to finish without any of that pesky wheel of death we have a question from Ian in my experience one of the difficulties with community engagement is that sometimes our messages run counter to what the community need to be able to do in the immediate period after the part the passage of the front of the fire traffic control for instance we tell people to leave early one of the main reasons they don't is because they're worried they're not going to get back and they've got animals and their property and they want to be there and look after it are we doing any work to address that sort of conflict between keeping them safe when the fire is at its worst and coming up with a way of allowing or facilitating their return and following then we'll get some of your new messages here oh look it's a fantastic question it's a fantastic conundrum that you do post because it's one that our incident management teams really do grapple from time to time and you know Trevor as an incident controller which i'm sure i'm pretty sure over the time of your career you have been faced with that exact conundrum between you know advising people providing those that that message particularly that you know that watch and act that you know the advice for people to leave you know leave now or or including emergency warnings you know leave now shelter now talk us through i guess how how you balance off the message between that community preparedness yeah leave if your plan is to leave leave early or you know when the fire actually occurs yeah it really is one of those difficult spaces to be in and i cast my mind back to Black Saturday up around Marysville when it was pretty much in order to get people out and and people have got animals and they're they're stocked that they really know that they needed to support and feed and water so it's very important and those people do really need proper guidance so my experience in incident management teams where we've been faced with this is we've really got to work with our public information officers to have a good strategy and establish some good timelines and when i say timelines i mean triggers so when when a fire gets to this point here we're going to be providing them with the advice message and the advice message will be clear that there will be further days of greater fire activity so the message is is to leave early but if we were progressing and the fire develops well then we need to obviously build the messaging up to evacuate or whether it's too late to evacuate so very difficult space and we've got to work very closely with our colleagues in the emergency management team with Victoria police because there is areas where we've had to shut down roads or put traffic management points in locations for a greater geographic area because of the area the road networks but to also get them opened up as quick as we can to allow people back in safely and sometimes that takes a bit of work absolutely but i guess some you know watching tonight would say uh but chief isn't that what a bushfire survival plan is all about uh and having so how important is it to have a bushfire survival plan yeah bruce particularly when we you know in's question was around yeah perhaps a reluctance to want to leave early um or in fact leave an area when advised to do so by by fire services and you've got you know you've got animals you've got things to to to look after um the reality is you probably should have thought about it before the fire absolutely chief i you know people need to plan ahead so you know if they're living in a high risk area they need to have a think about what are the risks to them and how they're going to try and help them mitigate the risks because being volunteers we we've got our own properties to look after as well so you know if you've got a lot of stock in that then you want to have a bit of a plan about where's my stock going to go and we've got some great information that can help the community understand how to manage their stocks during a bushfire we've got some great information that will help them develop a plan on how to leave early you know or whether they choose to stay and defend which you know some people would prefer to you know we've got some great information that can help them set that up so the information and the key is to I guess inform communities to know where to get that information and the lead up to so so if you're able to keep an eye on the fire dangers so you know the fire behaviour index and understanding the fire danger ratings and the call to action throughout the fire danger ratings um you know as we know you know the moderate in particular yeah have a plan plan and prepare um yeah they're all the things that and as you know then a couple of days time you might be looking at um you know a potentially extreme rating then you know to your point yeah what am I going to do with my stock correct I'm going to do with my animals yeah because there's a higher chance or a likelihood that on that day um I will need to put my bushfire survival plan into action uh or leave early when the fire occurs has been absolutely so it's about planning ahead but also taking opportunity even practice what you're going to be doing so so you know whether your plan is going to succeed and also whether you need to make some changes to your plan so I know we keep banging on about having a plan but and as people here you know all members would know it's very important for us to actually help our communities have a plan absolutely and as we all know planning to have a plan is not a plan and if you're a firefighter out there and you think that uh I don't need a plan because as we said before you can't tell me I know boats um please do yourself and your family a favor download uh that bushfire survival plan have the conversation with the family because here's the reality for for many of our members you're not going to be home when it happens because I know that members will be on the trucks they'll be out helping their communities and many of us will have family and loved ones back at home and the best thing we can do is make sure that when we're going off to that fire call that on the on the on the kitchen table on the fridge on that bad day is the bushfire survival plan so many of our loved ones if any they find themselves in that spot can pick it up and put that into action if if our if our members are not around so Bruce thank you Boris thank you for your participation and conversation this evening has been fantastic we're about to get some other panelists on the evening to continue this conversation but in the meantime we heard from Jean earlier about what training has been doing and some of the great work that they've been doing not only in the package development space and and the like but we training also wants to let our membership know what great resources are available through our VemTech facilities so here's Dave Maxwell to tell us about our VemTech facilities across the state and how you might be able to get access to them hello my name is David Maxwell assistant chief fire officer of training and delivery cfa operates eight Victorian emergency management training campuses across the state and over the next few months we'll be featuring all of these facilities and their fantastic pad staff in each volunteer forum these campuses are located in west sail bang home meldura penshurst longanon the land wangerata and huntley they are purpose-built facilities that enable volunteers to practice their skills in a safe controlled environment simulating a variety of fires and incidents we may face operationally the VemTechs have a wide range of facilities reflecting the risks of local districts and can be used by all members in the state often running multiple training sessions at the same time our campuses offer training for structural fire attack using breathing apparatus ventilation and salvage techniques emergency management of transport and industrial risks hot fire training using industrial and domestic LPG installations electrical fires hazardous material response and portable fire extinguisher use and safety the VemTechs feature props to safely train in a variety of urban and rural situations such as structural fires including commercial kitchen fires and bedroom fires using multiple levels forcible and hot door entry roof and ladder access specialist rescue such as confined space and trench rescue props additionally our VemTechs maintain a range of props to simulate vehicle fires including cars trucks trains aeroplanes fuel tankers running fuel fires and road collision rescue as well as urban response props such as industrial gas fires skip bins LPG cylinders electrical pile fires solar panel props and more some VemTechs also offer off-road driver training areas with cross slope driving steep inclines moguls and water and sand crossings there are also static water sources chainsaw training areas and extinguisher pads in addition to the emergency response training facilities the campuses also have a range of classrooms change rooms and locker rooms as well as barbecue dining and kitchen areas training is generally organized through the group or brigade in liaison with district staff and can take place during the day or in the evening you can find the booking form and additional information on the members online training page within the resources section thank you for watching we look forward to seeing you and your brigade attending one of our VemTech campuses in the near future. Thanks Dave for telling us all about the VemTech facilities and where they are located and how you can get access to them and I know I can still see the chat even though we are having technical video difficulties and there's a lot of questions and a lot of discussion in the chat this evening around access to training and how we can get involved and certainly you know accessing our VemTech campuses right across the state is one way that you can get access to the world-class training that I know many of our instructors and pad supervisors provide to our members welcome Lucy welcome Jude to the panel this evening and welcoming to the conversation continuing to talk about the PP of the PPR process so so Lucy you're here to talk about a couple of things this evening particular post fire services reform and what it means to be doing community engagement particularly on the fringe areas of CFA and FRB districts and Jude we'll talk about more broadly across Southeast region I guess and some of the great work that you've been doing in that community engagement aspect so but before we get to that sort of area I'm gonna I want to talk about the elephant in the room and that's how important is community engagement and connectivity operations because when I was a community safety officer I used to be accused of being a pamphlet chucker because that's how some of the the operations people seem to view us that people that are very passionate about about educating communities and preparing so how important is community safety and community education and operations who wants to tackle that one I can start us off and then you can talk about the experience that you've seen I guess the research tells us that it is the most important tool we have to saving lives so you know when I talk about engagement and and community preparedness I'm talking about that whole systems aspect around legislative change advocacy resourcing for community capability and connectedness so you know the research and the evidence is really really clear on the fact that we will save more lives getting people to look after themselves and either eliminating or reducing the risk for themselves then we will if we get there when a fires already started and it's not just about community lives we're actually talking about firefighters lives as well so particularly when we talk we look at you know structural fire safety you know dangerous goods and those sort of things a lot of that and some people probably don't think that that sits within community safety portfolios that the actions that get taken there are actually also designed not only to keep community safe but to primarily keep firefighters safe as well which is operations to me yeah look it's the spectrum isn't it so and they're all connected so there's actually opportunities during a response and recovery and you spoke about that earlier around the information aspect and the communicating with community around warnings and messages and I think you know the community is very attuned to taking action if they've just seen a fire on their street or if they've just seen a fire in their neighbour's property or in their grandparents region or something like that so I think that the the spectrum is interconnected and it's all happening at once at some stages but yeah look it's very complimentary I always say they'll always be fires even if we do the best prevention and preparing as possible we live in fire country they'll always be the work of suppression to do but our our work can be really greatly enhanced and minimise you know risk of fatality and injury both to ourselves and the community if we if we invest in this really really well and and you know we're coming up on some pretty serious anniversaries and recognition events obviously the yeah the anniversary of Black Saturday in 09 but even bigger the 40 year anniversary of the 83 Ash Wednesday bushfires and to your point around when there's fire in the landscape when there's fire in the hills people tend to take notice and do certain things Trevor what's your experience we haven't yeah we had 1920 it's rained arguably in a lot of places for two years since what do you think that does to community sentiment community awareness I guess and having the forefront of fire protection in in communities might to me observation with community becomes complacency and we've got to break down those barriers of complacency so we get our message through because if the if the mindset of the community is that's where the training it's not going to happen to us that's where it's so important to tailor our messaging to get through that barrier because we do have that risk here right now and what's your experience been jude so you're right I suppose I'm looking over the last few years chief where we've seen you know we haven't had those fire seasons community is getting complacent and we need to actually start thinking about how we're approaching next summer like this summer's here and now yep we're going to get some hot days but I think the work we've got significant parcel of work to do between now and next summer to actually bring community back on board I think we've had a number of events with COVID and we've just got to get back in that back into that mindset about preparing community what did COVID do for community engagement well it changed the way we work so suddenly we couldn't go door knocking anymore we couldn't get people into our brigades anymore everything that we used to take for granted and do as business as usual was turned on its head so to the CFA's credit the community engagement staff and volunteers were I believe the very first to pivot which was a great word in the COVID era and and do things differently and we actually set I suppose a new way of working and transformed our service delivery model before any of the other fire services and even the other emergency services so we essentially transformed all our programs to be able to be delivered online into people's homes and we created tools and resources and platforms to be able to do that and training for our people to be able to do that and and we set a new way of working that became a bit of a model for other agencies so that's now been adopted and and dispersed in Victoria through MCOP but also nationally through our AFAC partners they've sort of looked at what we've done and gone oh we should get in on that so we got in there pretty early and we've actually managed to engage whole new audiences who never would have come to our fire stations or never would have really gotten out into the places that we were getting to so it's been a really fantastic opportunity I think for CFA to to reach new reach new people yeah something new to you know holding that street meeting down by zoom lane and bringing the you know bringing the pardon the pun bringing the you know the community get up online in their own living rooms in their own environment and I guess it is quite novel when you're sitting I guess you're sitting there you might be looking out across the porch listening to the CFA you know talk about preparedness and the rest of it and they're they're looking at it they're looking at their property they're sort of thinking about it in their mind as opposed to sitting in a fire shed like we are yeah and then going home and thinking about it so certainly to be congratulated Lucy and the team for how you were able to pivot as you say the word because we really did we're able to continue that that essential work so Lucy I guess a question for you that I'm sure many people would ask can I do community engagement in an FRB district well the answer chief is a big fat yes yes you can we have legislation that really empowers us to be able to deliver community engagement services anywhere in Victoria and since the reform took effect there has been a little bit of confusion especially for brigades that are in co-located areas or that are on the fringe that previously served these communities and now these communities are technically within a FRB district what does that mean for the brigade well what it means is that you can still deliver community engagement to your communities and unfortunately we just haven't had real clarity on how that looks up until now so we've managed to develop an operational bulletin which in black and white really spells out yes you can deliver and this is how you do it so I really do encourage everybody to have a look at that ops bulletin when it comes out which should be you know in the next few very very shortly but the process just really empowers our volunteers to be able to say well yeah no I have a right and I have an ability to deliver community engagement to these communities that happen to be in FRB districts and I would say so too to FRB have the ability to come into the country over Victoria because you know what we saw in Malacuta for example was that a lot of the people who are affected they weren't actually from there they were in the metro areas so there's a real need for us to be fluid just like our people and deliver community engagement to our target audience wherever they may be so you know historically we would go to the Royal Melbourne show for example because a lot of farmers would come into those areas and they it's a lot easier than to get out to each farm which is you know distance the tyranny of distance made that a really huge job so you know just as we might come into metro areas or into FRB districts to hit a mass group of people that are that are congregating because they live or work there so too might FRB want to come into a country area from time to time so the principles around how does this look it's really about saying well we want people and Bruce talked about this earlier want people to plan ahead we want to you know community engagements it is a planned concept it's not something you just do ad hoc and you know without thinking it is a it is a plan process it's how we define community engagement so we really are looking for brigades to work out what they're going to do ideally for the whole year but if not for the month ahead so have a good plan for the next month and you know get that chain of command approval within your CFA chain of command to make sure that your captain's aware of what's going on that your BCSC knows what's happening as a volunteer that you're going to conduct this engagement activity in the FRB district once that approval's been given the operation bulletin explains that you are to communicate that to your to your FRB district ACFO three weeks before the event to give them a heads up that hey this is something happening in the FRB patch this is what it's going to be this is why we're doing it so this is the community need and you know it's really a notification we're not asking for approval we're letting them know that this is happening and giving them a few weeks notice so what happens if so let me throw some hypotheticals at you know we've been contacted by the local you know child care center or preschool they'd love for the fire truck to come down and maybe do a you know a bit of a home fire safety evacuation type drill with with the kids it's in an FRB district currently but the CFA Brigade may have gone there before you've notified the district yeah there's been that communication at FRB and they say no no no we want to do it yeah so I'd say if FRB so you've told them three weeks prior we're going to do this engagement because the schools asked us and FRB comes back maybe that day no no we've got this covered then I think we would say well we need to really reassess whether we need to be delivering that or if FRB can do it then maybe we need to look at another community in need however I would say if it's closer to the date you know it's tomorrow or it's next week and we've made all the plans we've done the logistic arrangement with the school we've built that relationship and FRB said oh we will do it but we don't know when we'll do it and there's sort of not that strong commitment of yet we're going here on that date I would say you can reconsider whether you need to go there but I would say you don't necessarily have to not do it at all you know an option might be to work with the FRB staff to say well do you want to come in and let's do it together I think you know there's we do have slightly different programs with slightly different outcomes and outputs so while we're not looking at co-delivery at this stage although that would be amazing in the future we'd certainly be offering whether whether they're saying they want to do it or not we'd certainly be offering for FRB to attend and and have a look at our sessions so that they can at least be present and make those connections with the community as well yeah so we want that I guess the word is we want that collaborative approach you know so it's not binary it's not one or the other it's really about talking about it talking to your your FRB station locally to the FRB staff now whether the brigade does that or whether that's through through the district or the although like because it's about getting a I guess an arrangement in place where because at the end of the day it's about community it's about meeting the safety needs of the community and addressing the needs of the community so we actively encourage people to to get out engage with the community spread that fire preparedness and fire safety message and as you've heard it from Lucy tonight it doesn't matter whether it's in a fire district or not however common courtesy and a bit of collaboration speak to your FRB counterparts and have that conversation in between the two you know be able to to work that out and I think that's probably a really good way of working jointly because you know together you know we can get a lot more done than than than not so absolutely fantastic we have a question in our in the audience and Ruth over to you thanks guys it was really interesting hearing that conversation about what's changed in COVID and of course one of the things that's really changed for all brigades is the community's moved online which means community engagement through Facebook has been really powerful I want to give a shout out to the social media group at CFA who produced the tiles but I guess the point of this is that centralising social media messages really helps brigades it's floating in fruit of what we can do and I'd like to ask you to do more in that space particularly around here we've got a lot of weekenders and the tree change that's come post COVID we want to be able to reach them while they're in Melbourne and they might not be on our Facebook so if you could look at innovative ways of social media so I know you've got Instagram but using influences that get to the Melbourne people YouTube with funky people I mean even TikTok right 80% of Australians have got a Facebook page now but that's used to the mature end not a muscle good at TikTok but if you can do that in head office and then give us titles that we can put out on Instagram that would really really help us to engage those people that we can't do or not but they're online thank you great great suggestion and comment there Ruth and you've just put a smile on the face I've got to tell you of the entire young members group who have been trying to get me to do a TikTok dance for the last two years so thank you for reminding them I'm sure they'll give me some stick about that at our next young person's advisory committee so Lucy from the research and some of the evaluations and like how important is Ruth touched on that social media connectivity and the like how important is things like that medium to try and to connect to communities and send a you know send a message yeah thanks chief so a lot of our research at the moment in the community engagement space is focusing on a fairly new I suppose school of thought an academia called behavioral insights and that is really looking at how do we change behavior how do we motivate people what are some of these elements that are being used in marketing specifically and how can we take all that amazing stuff that's been going on well since mad men really and kind of adapt that for a safety purpose so Ruth touched on some some great stuff there which was the social element so that's you know if someone is in your social network who's doing it or someone who you aspire to be is doing it that can be a really powerful influencer there's there's some other sort of elements that we're looking at which come under the what we call the east framework so it needs to be easy we've got to stop asking people to do this and this and this and this in this way and in this way so you know a lot of our program design is now looking at well how can we simplify things how can we make things not only easier for our community for our brigades to actually deliver how can we just make almost like break down our programs to build them into little modules and building blocks and you can pick and mix the lolly bag that you want to deliver to your community the timeliness the timeliness of it so again that's another the east framework talks about having messaging that's really timely so it's you know we have winter campaigns we have summer campaigns we do have and I would say to Ruth also have a check out of the content portal because there's a lot of static stuff that can be taken by brigades and used for their own social media pages so that they can tailor the content really to their to their community so yeah there's a lot of research that we're using we use a lot of um data and evidence garnered by the cfa knowledge team so the post season surveys we go to areas that have been affected by fire and ask them what have you done since this fire what what do you think about cfa what did you do last fire so we're using that inside and intelligence as well and we're using other sort of risk platforms so using the latest statistics of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to look at our communities and say well who's actually living in these brigade areas what do they look like and you know the data is quite up to date now because we've just had the abs roll out so it's it's got a lot of insights in there and I think combining that data and research with the valuable intelligence of brigade members like like Alyssa is is the perfect mix so because the reality is we are a diverse community from all walks of life from all backgrounds and we know you know that we have communities that are popping up you know everywhere we are a rapidly expanding city and population center are here in victoria and it's really about understanding the community isn't it like and then once you understand the community then you can connect better to them so if i'm going into a chinese community for example that where english is not the first language or is a low proportion then going in and telling people to you know clean their gutters you know speaking english is probably not going to achieve much is it or same like when you tell a child that they need to work on a fire plan and they're dealing with domestic violence at home you know there's I think the better we understand our communities and what they're facing in terms of their risks and their capabilities the better we can support them and fill that gap where we need to but also step back and let them do for themselves where they're able to so it's really understanding their capability and I really like I guess your discussion point around the simplicity and that simplicity led to a revision of the Australian you know national fire danger rating system and the reduction of the ratings that we have now because to be perfectly frank if the rest of Australia is like me and anything more than three things and you tend to tend to forget a few so you know it is about you just say getting it simple not going out and telling people to do a list of things because but the reality is by the time you get past the fourth item odds are you know they're going to forget all the forgot for the other first few so and I think that's really key to understanding and delivering some good good programs isn't it is it was really fascinating to go through the research for the AFDRS because we as fire services obviously knew best and we had a really clear idea of what we thought the ratings should look like and here's the community saying that should look like this and I think just listening to the community is going to be that key and you know we are one of our strategic objectives is to put the community at the centre the more we can co-design and co-deliver with community and when I talk about co-delivery I mean for brigades not necessarily trying to get the community to come to you but actually working with your rotary your lions your schools your co-health you know your community healthier council the more you can work in partnership the the the more reach that we can have and the more we can influence that social element and you know we're not always the people that community want to hear from even though we are the fire experts sometimes you know students learn best from their teachers so working with teachers to deliver those fire messages in schools is a lot more powerful and it's actually easier for us because it means we don't have to be there from the centre all the time absolutely and and I guess the other challenge for us and particularly in our First Nations populations and the connection to country but also the connectivity to the elders yeah and to your point yeah we can stand there in a uniform yeah I'm here from the government and I'm here to help but the reality is you're probably not going to break through as best as you could if you engage with the community engage with the elders and use those networks to you know to a establish trust in the fire service and what we're here to try and help people do but then also get them to you know do what you know what we would like them to do and that's that's prepared yeah and I've got to say shoots does a lot of that in southeast regions so working with the multi-faith community and yeah getting I mean you can talk more about that but that's something that the brigades are really getting into so we might just hold it there due to because I think we're going to go there and I get a sense that we're going to be talking quite a lot about that but we have Ian again with another question because Ian's an old bloke and not all us old folks use Facebook or comfortable with social media and even the farmers of you know the farming population is getting older they use it as a tool for what they do on the farm but that vehicle there is the best way to get through to older people face to face talk to them and what a great asset to have so many of them spread around and stuff absolutely thanks thanks that's probably a nice little segue into what you were just about to talk about Jude so how do we connect with you know various aspects of the of the community whether you be you know very young through the old very you know multi-faith multicultural how have you managed to do that in the southeast region it's been quite a journey so even with our multicultural community the communities across the region it has been challenging and we've been quite lucky we've had some some staff members that have been very passionate about our multicultural engagement and it starts off by just connecting with those faith leaders those community leaders and it builds from there so it's about right it's about actually just having a conversation and building relationships and connecting in and then and then like from little things big things grow and that then enables that trust to be invited to after dinners to other multi-faith and faith events and you know that's when you start to get the cut through and we've got a couple of really really strong brigades i think keysborough noble park they're very strong and acknowledging them in actually that multicultural community so that's what one of that's had some of those brigades been actioning now in the past we've had um we've done a program which was called next gen where we engaged with some high schools with significant multicultural communities a lot around afghani communities where we'd work in collaboration with Australian federal police sES surf lifesaving victoria police and cfa mfb back then and we'd run like an open day event at fire stations and like a careers day to engage and break down those barriers of what the uniform sometimes can represent to some of those communities so that's working extremely well and our brigades are currently working on through little programs like that at the moment and we've got other things coming up around that working with our indigenous communities meeting it you know at the gathering places and working well through that through that engage with those communities is really important so we spend a bit of time in our gathering places and we need to reconnect as with covid we stopped doing some of that work again working down at lake ties with the trust down there and engaging with that community it's really important hopefully getting some plan burns done in that that location as well so just building trust again when it's the first nations just trying to work on that clearing and connecting back to countries really important and showing that we do that and we do that honestly and again it just that's probably some of the work that we've been doing in southeast around trying to engage with multicultural and we know that in our growth areas certain growth areas we're starting to see increase in certain types of multicultural groups coming in so we see an Indian Tamil movement into the southeast which is a bit different and new to some communities and how we actually engage with that is a lot different how we've engaged with maybe our Vietnamese communities in the past around Springville so yeah it's it's always moving and it's the new emerging communities that are really not I wouldn't say challenging but actually you get a lot of joy out of working with that I know even in district nine we've got a certain multicultural group that likes to come up through up into a whole of that Cooper's Creek so and through some observations from Victoria police we've engaged with them back where they reside back in the metropolitan district so we've actually had some success there so is it uh is it just as simple for a brigade to throw open the door sit back and say come on in I'll tell you all about it no it's it's quite challenging I think brigades um you know some you know the best thing is a brigade would actually just try and um wouldn't open the doors but actually just try and find that faithful leader or that that key key group they want to work with and just slowly chip away at it like Bruce would say but you know there's probably someone in the brigade that might know that group already so you know it's just about the stronger the brigade is connected with the community the stronger the brigade is and that's the strength of CFA you know community based fire and emergency service and I think that's some of the strength that we have as an organization that you know many of the people that form the brigades are from the community so we know our communities we know our people in our communities and that's why I think you know in a lot of ways it is easier for us sometimes to be able to connect with those community leaders in order to get that as you say build that trust then once we build that trust to be able to move you know the community to an area where we would like them to get to in terms of fire um fire safety uh we have another question here this evening and over to you Pauline hi um thanks for the opportunity I'd just like to know um where we can get additional support from we're a very busy brigade getting out there within our community we've been really busy in the last few weeks we've had Australia day we've been out at um creating harvest this weekend um trying to organize all these things when you're working full-time and um you know commitments elsewhere I do a lot of my requesting for things on the weekend um and then that's taking away from the weekend when you're working full-time some systems that we could put in place that it's not where we're thinking oh we've got to go ahead and order this and we've got to do this and we've got to do that because the weekends come around pretty quick and then we're behind the April we have the an opportunity to use the vehicle um on our March jeep big market which we'll bring out to talk to our people about but it's just trying to gather all the resources and then um like when I've ordered it it's got to come from somewhere else and I'm thinking okay now we've got to work out how we're going to bring it up so it's a lot of those things and I know our community leopards engagement um at the district mine essentially organized to get it here for me but it's said making sure that I get that part done and that part done to get it to that stage I just what I guess I'm saying is there going to be more support given to us volunteers who are doing more and more and more um in the future great question I think a really good insight to some of the challenges that our brigades have particularly our busy brigades are on the on the urban uh bush or grass uh interface um who wants to tackle this uh question so I can with help of Alyssa right yeah um so in terms of how we're going to support volunteers there's a whole systems approach that needs to kind of happen I think so we need to recruit more people who are willing to dedicate their time to just this stuff um and I don't think that's been as much of a focus as it can be so we're working really closely with the um volunteer sustainability team to really understand what a targeted marketing campaign will need to look like um we've been working as Boris talked about the capability pathway so we now have at least a career sort of um a career pathway for people who come in which we've not really had articulated previously I'm really keen on looking at um this will be news to you I'm really keen on getting medals you know awards that are dedicated for this work that value it just as much as um fire suppression work um we've got epaulets you know we've got some fancy bells and whistles so this whole rewards and um engagement sort of uh thing that will help not only create a bigger workforce but retain that workforce um and then we've got these resources like the MEUs which I'm hoping will be that one-stop shop so you don't need to pull brochures and things like that from all the all the places so we've got the MEUs and I would say to our brigades out there please flog them flog them to death because the more I can prove through data that they're being used the better business case I can have to say we need more of these so you know use the assets that that you've got and in terms of you know we've got a casual pool of staff that are also there to support volunteers so if you're feeling overwhelmed or at capacity that's something that the regions are able to kind of plan plan with you to make sure that the key activities are covered um uh Alyssa did you want to add some other I mean there's a group level support yes definitely definitely that's what I was going to mention Lucy that you know we've all got our groups and within those groups we've got X number of brigade community safety coordinators that you know they know they're within from within the same district or the same group so we know the area um we're able you're able to reach out to those people and ask them and I think one of the most important things is you know what you mentioned Lucy around that target recruitment you know every time um you know brigades are wanting to recruit members we need to be thinking about what do we need those members for are they for operational purposes daytime crew are the crew are they to do fundraising are they to do community engagement and you know having the support of the volunteers and sustainability team in putting together and talking to your keks um about trying to put together some amazing recruitment ads that you can put on facebook you can do a newsletter drop a flyer drop throughout your community and asking people to specifically join their brigade for the purpose of community engagement as non-operational members and then sometime I mean I joined our brigade as a non-operational member with no real thought about becoming operational but my captain at the time suggested that that would be better and would enhance and you know we ended up with another operational member so you know being able to you know I suppose really try and find people that are passionate because I think we're all a little bit crazy and passionate in the world of community safety because you know you really have to be because it is it's tiring work it's it can be a full-time job and the more members that you've got in your brigade to support you and building teams and you know we have one brigade community safety coordinator but there's probably other members within our brigades who really want to help but they just you know don't necessarily know where to begin so I would encourage everybody to you know talk to their brigade community safety coordinator and get their captains on board it's really important to have that support from your captain that really supports your brigade doing the work that you're doing in community safety and trying to encourage more members to you know especially if you're you know if we're doing amazing community safety and our turnout numbers are low then we need to keep our members engaged so there's a whole lot of community engagement work that needs to be done so thank you and thank you for that fantastic question well ladies and gentlemen it's come to that time of the evening again where one must wrap it up for another volunteer forum once a couple of things are in finishing up firstly I want to thank very much our panelists this evening Trevor Robert, Salissa Jans, Bruce Jool, Jude Kennedy, Lucy Seroni and Boris thank you very much for coming on this evening and having I think a great conversation around community engagement and preparedness again apologies for the technical issues we had the team behind the desk have done a fantastic job this evening to ensure that recording is kept going so that we have been able to make this available to you to be replayed on YouTube at the conclusion of this or on members online so thank you to the team I know you spent most of the afternoon testing the equipment and making sure that works as you do before every volunteer forum but as they say when it happens it happens and it certainly has tonight so thank you to the team and thank you to everyone for staying with us throughout throughout this if you have feedback I'd love to know what you think about the forum in particularly what some of the things that you would like to hear about talked on the forum panel and you can send that through to internal comms at cfa.big.gov.au and their the internal comms team are really wanting to know what you think of the forum but also some of the things that we can that we can talk about we won't be having a February volunteer forum just for I guess information and that's because we're going to have a very special edition of the volunteer forum broadcasting from Pennhurst VemTech facility on International Women's Day but where we will be celebrating the women of cfa and hearing from them and some of the great achievements that that they have and one of the things that we are absolutely going to be that will be on the 8th of March so please put it in your calendar now as I know many of you will and so thank you thank you for I guess for coming along this evening as I said put the 8th of March in your diary for that special volunteer forum in closing as I said earlier throughout the forum this evening we have two anniversaries coming up but for many we'll bring back memories and and emotions of the experiences of our brigades through that whether that be part of Black Saturday in 2009 or in fact the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 83 we'll be commemorating the 40 year anniversary in Cockatoo for the Ash Wednesday fires in fact there'll be many ceremonies held right across the state whether it be in the surf coast or in fact I will be joining the Nari Warren Brigade up in the Upper Beaconsfield a particular site sacred to them so wherever you are please stop think reflect on the sacrifices made of many of our members in the communities during those tragic events but if you are struggling if you do need assistance please reach out to members online and the members support there that the team are able there to provide that assistance to you and information available is on members online remember it is okay not to be okay well ladies and gentlemen thank you to the live audience for coming this evening thank you for asking some of those questions obviously that we couldn't get them from the chat here this evening it's been fantastic to have you here this evening I like you are waiting for me to be quiet so we can get out the back for a couple and a scorn so with that thank you very much ladies and gentlemen and thank you for drawing the drawing west for allowing us to come and gatecrash your station this evening stay safe and have a great evening