 Good evening and welcome to the November Volunteer Forum. We're coming to you live tonight from Ballarat Fire Station here in District 15. As always, I'd like to start off the Volunteer Forum by acknowledging the Aboriginal lands to which we're all watching, celebrating and presenting to you here today and pay my respects to Aboriginal elders past and present and welcome any elders of other Aboriginal communities to be with us this evening. Another great jam-packed tonight of talking about training. I know it's been very topical, Jean. A lot of watches out there have probably been waiting for you to come on and have this forum tonight, so I think there's going to be lots of discussion and lots of questions. It's been quite topical, so it's basically all about training this evening. We have a lot of other questions that we will get to and as usual, we have the live chat running this evening, so if you do have any questions whether it be training-related or all that otherwise, please feel free to put your question in the chat. As always, to begin with, tell us where you're from and I actually would like to start off by giving a special little shout-out this evening to Sandra Ince who I noticed is her first time watching and welcome to the CFA, new to our organisation in Wyndham Bale. So thank you for watching this evening and I hope you're having a fantastic time here with the CFA. A big shout-out to our live audience this evening and can I especially thank Mark Cutledge from Captain of Ballarat Brigade for allowing us to come into this fantastic station, this historical station and we're going to talk a little bit more about that as long as other members of District 15 welcome all and likewise I'm sure many of you will also ask the hard questions of Jean and Rowan, I am sure. Joining me on the panel this evening, I have Deputy Chief Officer Rowan Luke from South West Region, welcome Rowan. Good evening Chief. We have Deputy Chief Officer Jean Dysel who needs no introduction our DCO for Operational Doctrine and Training, very popular deputy. We have Ian Cosby leading firefighter with Fire Rescue Victoria was with CFA. Also you're an instructor with CFA, a volunteer, an ex-captain and a member of Burning Long and a man of many hats. Thank you for coming along. Thanks Chief. It's fantastic to have you on the panel here tonight and we have Bill Cook, another deputy group officer but ex-captain as well from Sebastopol Brigade and you're a volunteer trainer and assessor. Thank you for coming on this evening as well and again I'm pretty sure there's probably going to be a few questions coming to both of you this evening. Look forward to it. I'm sure around training and how it all comes to be. Online we have many of our senior managers across CFA ready to answer your questions. So if I don't get to your questions this evening still please feel free to put it into the chat. Our friendly team are online and will try and answer as many as they can to get to as many as we can. Ian, fantastic facility we're in and I say fantastic in as far as the history. The walls just ooze history in this place. Can you tell me a little bit about it? So we're in the heart of one of CFA's oldest stations in fact it's one of the oldest continually operating stations in Australia if not in the Southern Hemisphere and it was actually staffed by career staff up until 1983 when they blended with Ballarat City. Wow, absolutely phenomenal and I know many probably can't see or on the screen there you can see one of the many trophy cabinets there which is the brigade has had such a rich history with running with events and with firefighting here in Western Victoria. Absolutely some of the trophies we had some at Ballarat City also and they tried to appraise them and they were classed as priceless. I have no doubt at all. And I'm sure many are watching this evening thinking wow that's an interesting piece behind us. We have an old Dodge truck here behind us. So what can you tell us about it? So it's a 1943 Dodge Pumper. It was actually stationed here at Ballarat Brigade and lovingly restored by the members for one of their milestones. In particular a shout out should go to Stan Nieshaw who was a member in excess of 65 years who has just recently passed and he also used to work at our CFA when they owned the workshops in Ballarat and was instrumental in many, many trucks and I think he was also hand-painted part of this one and if anyone remembers the Pink Panther fire trucks they used to be painted in a paint called Weederlux which was like Dayglow Orange and that was one of his specialties. So yeah very, very honoured to have this piece of history behind us and also the memories of the man. Absolutely and I know Mark and the crew here at Ballarat Fire Brigade lovingly look after it and take it out often to shows and events and they really are doing a fantastic job at keeping the history, the tradition, the culture of CFA alive. So thank you Mark and thank you to the members of the Ballarat Brigade. Well Jean, it is about you tonight. It is about training your team and many across the state. So when I first came into CFA people would remember the Chiefs Tour and a lot of conversation raised by brigades at that time around training and some of the challenges that our members were having with training but not only some of the challenges, also some of the great stuff that we are doing in the training space as well. So one of the things that I did give my commitment to very early on was undertaking a review of training and by bringing in AFACS, the Australian Australasian Fire and Emergency Services Council to do a bit of a peer review and training and the reason for that was post fire services reform we were a very different CFA. The government had turned us into a primarily volunteer fire and emergency services supported by a career star from both CFA and FRV and it was about making sure that our contemporary offering for training was and does continue to meet the needs of our volunteers. So it had a couple of recommendations and I know we're going to talk about that a little bit this evening but Jean, I guess for many out there some might not know who you are, where you're from do you want to tell us a little bit about your history and how you got to be involved in training and adult education? Thank you Chief and good evening to everybody at home and everybody in the audience here. It is a pleasure to be here and I'm sure we'll have some robust discussions tonight and some very big questions. There's not too much about me, I'm quite a boring person. I love education and training and have been working in it for many years. So my background is anything in relation to public safety and I've been working alongside military, alongside police, alongside other public safety agencies for probably more than close to about three decades now. Very happy to have joined the CFA. In fact it's the one area that I'm not that familiar with in terms of fire. So I have learned through a trial by fire about what training means within CFA and I think if I may just offer this observation training seems to be very deeply felt within the CFA. People are very passionate about their training. They have different opinions about their training. They have different views about their training and I must say when you have that kind of passion everything else in terms of issues are resolvable as long as you've got a membership that supports training and I certainly have felt that training has been supported by every single member within the CFA. And one of the things about CFA and our training offering is we are a registered training organisation to provide nationally accredited public safety training packages and the adult vocational education. Can you tell us a little bit about what it means to be an RTO and I guess some of the things that we need to do and the reason why I ask that is Don asked this evening does CFA need to be an RTO? I believe that most voles don't need formal qualification and it simply seems to create artificial blocks to providing training and skills. Thank you. Thank you Dona. Thank you Chief. It's probably the question that I get asked the most as I work my way through different districts and speaking to different brigades. There are distinct benefits in being an RTO but there's also compliance matters that come with alongside with being an RTO. So I guess the primary three benefits of being an RTO is first and foremost we are training to an industry agreed standard and I think nobody should underestimate how important that is when you are working in public safety, in circumstances where your own personal safety is put at risk the colleague next to you's safety is put at risk and the community's safety is put at risk. So the ability to train to a standard and know that everybody on your team has met the same industry agreed standard is really important in training. So that's probably the first reason why I think it's a good idea for us to maintain our RTO status. Secondly it allows us to be interoperable. So we get to work alongside other public safety agencies when there are particular events such as the recent floods. They know that we've been trained to a good standard they know that we can work alongside them and that's really important. And then I think from a personal point of view it is important particularly for the volunteers that give up their time and their effort and time with family and their personal time and commitment that we give them the assurances that they have transferable skills. And without being an RTO and without receiving a statement of attainment it's very difficult for any volunteer to prove and provide evidence that they actually have transferable skills. Now I'm sure there's some members out there that would say right about now we've tried to have members transfer from other fire services and other jurisdictions so we've had that chat haven't we team? But it is whilst we are dealing and fixing with some of those challenges that we have in getting it through the system it is important that we do have that national I think because it is supposed to be as simple as being able to move from one area to another from one jurisdiction to another one fire service to another and then all that's left I guess is that contextualization of what it means to operate within that within that organisation environment isn't it? Yep, that's actually very well explained. Can I say chief? Well explained. That's the former trainer in me. Ian, Bill, I'm betting you're biased but that's okay. How important is training and I think from your perspective Ian you're a career firefighter. How important is it to be able to have that interoperability and that ability to know that we meet the same standards or at least have that level of competence? I can only echo what yourself and the deputy said that interoperability is key and if we can transfer a person's competency across fire services and across other emergency services agencies and then just in layman's terms CFA is it to suit our operability then it has to be beneficial for the whole emergency service organisation across the nation and in fact interstate for example we've had a couple of New Zealand fire service people that have come across and everyone puts that for us we all do it the same way we might just use different branches or hoses or couplings but all in all I think it's very important that we're all singing from the same hymn book. And Bill from your perspective? Thanks chief and Gene touched on the earlier and that skills base works through so I know that Cross has got the same skills that I have and just builds that trust in the knowledge that everyone's trained and knows what they're doing being on multiple maps strike change from other areas you know that these people we're all at the same standard. It's not about making sure everyone's trained exactly the same like robots across all agencies it's just that's not reasonably practical but it is about those foundational skills I've been able to apply those foundational skills across. Gene another question for yourself and Grayson asks how come CFA can't seem to line courses up with other agencies such as chainsaw courses? There's actually no reason for us not to be able to do that but it is about all of the impacting factors so for example do we use the same equipment? Do we train in the same way? Can we as an RTO bounce off the fact that they have registered trainers and assessors and accredited trainers and assessors? But all of those compliance features are similar with your partner agency and that you've got a proper MOU in place so I don't want to go down a rabbit hole chief but if I may when you share training material as an example there's all sorts of legal factors that impact that so for example who does the package actually belong to if you share it? Who does the intellectual property belong to? If that particular organization changes the package and they don't let you know what does that for you as an agency still using that training package so there's actually a fair amount of work that has to be done to do that properly and to facilitate that sharing but in general that's certainly something that I think we can look at and Rowan particularly one of the things that Natalie myself did fairly on in our tenure was I guess do some executive functional realignments particularly across service delivery I did the same thing in terms of creating you know operational doctrine and training but one of the other things was put managers learning and development and training delivery in the regions underneath the regional deputies how's that working for you? So I think it is an improvement chief so the MLDs report directly to the DCOs but form part of the regional leadership team so if we think about the headquarters based team that work directly with Jean about developing you know the policy the packages the RTO requirements so set the framework this delivery of training really sits within the region as part of service delivery so to have the MLDs report directly to the DCOs I think has been an advantage what it's done is enable probably some more robust conversations with the MLDs and DCOs around training plans and we've still got a bit more work to go but you know there's been some significant focus about trying to get the right training program set that support the ACFOs in delivering services through their brigade so that relationship with the ACFO is as important as the DCO to identify what needs to be delivered what the priorities are and allow the MLDs to deliver that with the instructors and the team within the learning and development. Absolutely so Jean there are lots of questions flowing in I you know as I'm sure you've seen let's go to some of the hard ones because that's what we do on the volunteer forum we don't duck the hard ones so a lot of commentary around course cancellations I know we've had conversations around that and a lot of people sort of let us know what their thoughts and feelings are that is can you talk to us through I guess what you found what are you thinking in terms of course scheduling into the future Thank you Chief course cancellations certainly I can understand the frustration that goes with putting aside time registering for a course you know putting up your hand and then the course being cancelled but I think it is important to distinguish between the different types of courses so the largest amount of courses currently are being scheduled through the MLDs as Romans just indicated there so it's really important to understand that at times not all of the planets align for those regional courses to go ahead so for example we need to make sure that we've got an instructor available we need to make sure that the training material is available we need to make sure we're required that the equipment is available we need to make sure that we've got enough students to actually viably run the course and all of those planets need to align for the course to go ahead but I did want to just indicate that there's certain courses that are not exclusively run by the regions so if you have any issues in terms of those courses it's really important that you work with ODNT and my team to facilitate those courses and that encompasses first day training so that's courses we run the specialist response courses we run and some of the driver training courses we run as well. I think in terms of course cancellations it's been severely impacted we did a little bit of a training study over October definitely impacted via the floods and some of the deployments that occurred there and we are hoping that in November it's starting to ramp up again. The deputies myself and the chief are now monitoring course cancellations every month and we're hoping to understand what the trends are and what the reasons are for those course cancellations to be able to remove them and to have more courses available for volunteers. So talking about course availability and the like I know the team have been working very hard in transitioning our training packages from the PUA-12 to PUA-19 can you tell us what has been released so far and what's in the pipeline? Yes I have a list so I'll just work you through that I think in general we've got over 200 training packages which is a lot of training packages to manage lots of training courses there and every package has as you all know it's got an assessor you know skills pack for an assessor skills pack for the for the student it's got a reference manual it's got power points it's got so much material that sits behind every single one of those 200 courses so to review them and to review them properly takes a fair bit of time and I'm of the opinion that I'd like to do this properly I do not want to review or develop a course and once we've released it we get a lot of complaints about the course so we're actually starting to front load the consultation around those courses to make sure that we talk to the right people about the course content before the course is released but in direct response to your question chief we have released this year so far the rescue saw training package that handover is in place now we're doing the handover for Tree Hazard Assessor which I know has been a really big request from the volunteers the hazmat operator course has been released the Operate BA Open Circuit Classic has been released General Rescue has been released and Fire Investigation which I'm really proud of can I just say all of the really good work that people like Nicole Harvey have done on fine investigation under under Gary Cook really so that's all been released what we are about to work on? Ladies and gentlemen it has finally happened after all these months of doing the volunteer forum at Fire Brigade and Stations Ballarat is the first one to have a job Fair and Max Smack Bang in the middle of it so we'll give them a couple of seconds to get their bells and whistles down the road and I think we just hear them fade out now back over to you Thank you Chief we are about to embark working on crew leader strike team leader, sector commander respond to Urban which we know there's a really big request for and then some of the other courses we're going to look at are courses like Fire Weather One definitely driving that seems to be a really big request from most of our volunteers and we're also looking at reviewing certain parts of the general firefighter now that it's been rolled out and we've got some feedback on those courses so that's what's in the pipeline Awesome Bill the question for you if I may because I'm interested in the volunteer voice and what do you think about this one Question with CFA still using paid instructors such as Crosy Where do VTA sits or volunteer trainers and assessors sit? We'll see if I make sure and I guess how CFA sure will be making sure that our volunteer assessors get opportunity to teach their indoor subjects and maintain their skills so what's your thoughts to that and I guess your thoughts and feelings? That's a really great question and speaking from our region here at District 15 we are one unit there's no derision across we're a different uniform but we both deliver the same course, we both deliver together and the standard is the same that we get from each of us or from the whole teams whether they be paid staff or volunteers we deliver the same courses together and we're a really good taught unit so I'm really proud of that synergy and that I guess friendship and understanding of where each other come from it does work very well here and I hope it's the same across the state Absolutely Gentlemen what's the most popular course that people ask you to instruct on? Probably General Firefighter at the moment it always seems to be everyone wants to become a firefighter before flummer and it usually goes absolutely nuts if we're fronting up to a bad fire season all of a sudden they need back-size-on seats really really quickly so a lot of our time has spent this time of year doing general firefighter chainsaw operator that sort of thing and the driving courses Jeanne a lot of questions in here on our discussion and Ian likewise for yourself around the structural firefighter training I know you've touched on releases of packages and that sort of stuff it is a course that we know our people have been really calling out for so I guess where are we at with structural training and also I guess structural skills maintenance as well Thank you Chief at this point in time we are still working to transition the units of competency for that particular course from POA 12 to POA 19 and can I just say that the change between POA 12 and POA 19 is quite significant and one of the really small changes that they made that has resulted in a huge amount of work for the team reviewing the courses is around actually changing the range of conditions to you may use some of this to you must use and in just that one change of word it now means that we have to train in almost more types of equipment there's more elements that we have to train to so it has made it a bit more complex and that's the reason why it's taking some time for us to roll that out but it is important that we are compliant we have recently done our re-registration audit and it really brought back home for me the importance of our compliance ensuring that we do deliver to that industry standard so we don't get to choose what we'd like to deliver or not deliver when we've made the decision that that would be aligned to a national unit of competency and it's in that transition for us that there's a fair bit of work but I do want to say chief that that is normal it's not CFA specific so my background in many ways goes back to policing and we had exactly the same when you transition from one version of a training package to the next it's not going to be this transition sort of pain that you feel in trying to develop and realign the training packages absolutely another question and again Bill can you hear your thoughts on this but a question here from Don as an RTO the Impost on Volunteer Trainers is significant to maintain currency as a cert for TAA every four years or spend significant time obtaining the diploma of education hundreds and hundreds of hours can you hear your thoughts on that that is correct and can I say again it's a pain not just felt by the CFA every single public safety agency whether it's ACS Victoria Police and so forth all struggle to allow their trainers and assessors to maintain the skills and competencies required in the certificate for in training and assessment it's a very big issue nationally and I know that there's been several attempts at the federal government level to try and ensure that that particular certificate doesn't change so often and that the Impost in it isn't so big but I do agree with that it is a significant amount of time for our volunteer trainers and assessors and I guess that's part of the frustrations isn't it not only within CFA but also across the board as you say across the sector and I know it's discussed at AFAC level as well and as you said that every now and then at that federal level they tweak something which then results in thousands of instructors needing to change that if you have the Diploma it's less because I think once you get the Diploma then there's less changes to it correct but as was pointed out that's a lot of effort and a lot of time as well now I also noticed in the chat there was some conversation around the costs associated with obtaining Cert 4 in training now we had a bit of a program going and I think it might be still going around getting that Cert 4 and getting our people up to speed on that is that right? So we've actually had a program I think for about 20 of our trainers and assessors to undertake the Diploma so to actually move and transition from the certificate through to the Diploma but in general a lot of the competencies aligned to the certificate 4 in training and assessment that budget has now been divulged through to the regions so it's actually your MLDs that you need to be talking to to try and access some of the funding to support you so you've been getting a bit of a grilling here this evening Jane so far but it might be Rowan's turn so Rowan, South West Region so what are your thoughts I guess in up-skilling and maintaining skills for volunteer trainers and assessors? Thanks Chief excuse me I see our trainers and assessors having the same level of importance as our level 3 incident controllers so we invest in our level 3 incident controllers to get to the the mark that they need to reach to be able to deliver incident control across all hazards and the same with our trainers and assessors and I think again we've got a bit of work to do and I know there's some things starting to occur I can talk about some of the things in South West for example but that level of skill and qualification around the important role that trainers and assessors do need that level of support and I think there are some similarities in how we support incident controllers to how we could support our trainers and assessors into the future workshop style coming together common discussions around developing programs and sequencing availability of trainers and assessors to make sure that they're active in the work they do is really important because there's no point, same as an incident controller if you're an incident controller but you never get a call you're not going to do it for long and we need to make sure that our trainers and assessors have opportunities to deliver training no different than other roles Thanks Rowan Ian, a question for you so a question here is why is CFA providing skill packs that don't even have the correct information a close instructor friend of mine has to change the staff and tell the students that they are different we rely on our government's team to give us skills packs that are accurate and compliant instructors and trainer assessors no longer have access to them for that very reason they are controlled documents they are a legal document they are a legal requirement and hence that's why they're so closely guarded and all I can say is if there's any instructors or TA's that are changing skill packs and the import of the skills packs then they may not be compliant and unfortunately the participants may not actually get the competencies so I would caution against that very strongly some wise words there and I guess if there are identified problems with skills packs courses that sort of stuff who's the best person or where can people send that information through to get that looked at Jean? Thank you Chief, to the training in Mailbox it's very simple there's a training Mailbox set up so any continuous improvements if you pick up something as small as an error a spelling error if you pick up something really major that's incorrect please let us know we're happy to put that on to a continuous improvement register and make those changes of course if the change might affect safety the change needs to be made immediately Absolutely, one for you again Rowan Alyssa asks, regions need to support so they can in turn roll out community engagement training to our brigades across the state for the benefit of our communities I guess what are your thoughts to that community engagement training and the need to roll it out? So I agree, it is important that we have people delivering community engagement within the community at the same standard the challenge I think for Jean's team is the primary focus is in operational response priorities at the moment so it's probably lagging a little bit behind but I also appreciate there's a really strong team of community engagement, community safety teams within the regions that can support one-on-one to help deliver those programs and mentors so yes I think it's important the challenge is there's a lot of things that are trying to be rolled out at the moment and where it sits in that priority sometimes is really difficult So Bill, I understand a few weeks ago your district runner session for aspiring trainers and assessors, can you tell me more about it? Excuse me as we said earlier we've got a group where both the instructors and trainer assessors meet regularly and we've identified that we want to build on that base of particularly the trainer assessors so we held a night down at Belan and there were I think it was about 25 odd people that come along for the night and we both all shared our experiences and were able to answer the questions they had very positive feedback from the members attending and we've got some really great people that are keen and there's a few of them in the audience you can't see them but there's a number of people in the audience who are stepping up to take on those roles so they're very keen to expand the team and we're able to deliver for our members From experience for both of you and also I guess Jean and Rowan there's a lot of work that needs to be done we're not shying away from that and you've been very upfront with some of the challenges and issues that we're facing and I know one of the challenges that we have is trainer and assessor availability so there is a need for us to boost that cohort because I think if we've got more numbers and it lightens the burden on the few that are actually doing that work isn't it? Absolutely So if anyone's sort of thinking about stepping into that training environment becoming a trainer and assessor who can they talk to what's some of the advice that they might be able to get from at that local level? Probably start off talking with their captain or the brigade management team express their interest and then through the regions districts go and approach your learning development coordinators there and have a chat with them and express your interest that way Awesome, so that's in the volunteer space but I understand and also within ODT we're starting to do some professional development programs for our trainers and assessors can you tell me more? So I know there's been a very strong initiative by the ODT team to put some webinars up that we can log into and have a look at look at different topics I believe on the 1st of December for the instructor cohort the career instructor cohort there's a one on LL&N so language literacy and numeracy that we're looking forward to and the forum that Bill was referring to in West Region we've got a group we call TORCOP so training, assessing is working code of practice I believe it is and that's where another acronym yet another acronym that's where trainers and trainers assessors and instructors can come together with a common goal to do that professional development and just basically chew the fat and make sure we're all on the same page Awesome, lots of conversation discussions around how do I get into that training space talk to your captain, talk to your district but I guess if all else fails feel free to send an email through to the training training at cfa.big.gov.au and we'll point you in the right direction because getting a sustainable pool of trainers and assessors whether they be career or volunteer is how we're going to be able to sustain the training needs into the future and I think the reality is COVID has done us no favours it effectively shut training down for close to two years massive backlog of courses and then along came the need to transition training packages and the rest of it so unfortunately for training it's been a bit of a perfect storm which has led to a lot of the frustration of our members and we feel the frustration of our members and you've got a plan to try to unplug unblock the drain so to speak so we can get the training going and get those courses up and running it is important that we acknowledge that there have been a number of external factors attributed to some of the frustrations that are leading to our volunteers at the moment I know many of our members have participated in the AFAC peer review and I know I get questions from time to time about where are we up to with the AFAC peer review and what are some of the outcomes and when am I going to start to see some of the results or some of the learnings from that we've asked the program manager to give a bit of an update on the AFAC peer review so I'll throw to Brad to give us an update on where things are at Thank you Jason Hi everyone, I'm Brad Adrianza I'm the program manager for the AFAC peer review project implementation and it's a pleasure to be here today so as you know the AFAC project the report was accepted by the board and the executive just over 18 months ago a part of implementation for all the recommendations was establishing four working groups the training framework working group we have the governance working group diversity and inclusion and all capability, each working group was set up with the convener with the specialization in each of those areas and what we've done with the recommendations of the 14 we've grouped them according to their themes so from May we set up different meetings for each of the working groups now depending on the recommendations and the work that needed to be done the frequency of those meetings was slightly different so for example with the training framework because the main the recommendation that they focused on was developing an interim training training pathway so for that group we set up a series of nine workshops so they were meeting weekly where we heard from different subject matter experts in different domains that are using training pathways so for example we had presenters from aviation forest industry brigades FEM community engagement ACS who shared how they are using training pathways and we looked at what can we take from that experience and how can we apply those insights to the redevelopment of CFS interim training pathways so since April each of the governance and the training framework working group met between 12 and 18 times the diversity and inclusion working group we've had two initial meetings but that group only really meets the proposals to review so for that group they don't have recommendations per se to look after but what they do is they provide a valuable DNI assessment and sense check on all of the proposals and resolutions that the other working groups come up with to make sure that we covering off that we are covering all our bases from a diversity and inclusion perspective out of all those meetings I guess the question will be what have we done and what can we show for the work so the two the two working well three of the working groups have done quite a bit of work I just want to talk about the operational capability working group the recommendations that they are looking after they are adjacent projects that are underway at the moment that will impact on what recommendations are developed for those three so we have brigade classification review which is underway at the moment and the boss review which is underway and there's a pending piece of work in it so those are the three recommendations that group looks after so until those three adjacent projects are resolved and the outcomes are clear there's not much that the group can do at the moment so the bulk of the work is sat with the diversity and inclusion with the governance of the training framework working group so for the governance group their main focus has been on a recommendation that talks about revitalization of the volunteer train and assessor workforce and within that there are three different components so one is around the management and leadership structure of the volunteer trainer assessor cohort but more importantly around how do we recognize the contribution in value of our volunteers for full training roles so that group has put a lot of work in developing a proposal that begins to address some of those issues around recognition the AFAC project has been interesting in that there are lots of other adjacent projects and other contextual influences that are impacting on what those resolutions would look like so as the AFAC project manager and as a broader OD&T team we've been able to feed back to the group and say these are developments so this is policy thinking that will impact on these recommendations these are some things you need to consider and what would a resolution look like taking all of these things in mind for these recommendations so for the governance working group they've actually gotten to the point where they've been able to come up with resolutions to present to the project control board on almost all of their recommendations for the training framework working group out of the three recommendations that they have two are fairly straightforward to resolve the one that they've put a lot of work into is developing an interim operational training pathway which as you'd appreciate is a big piece of work so that group start they through a series of consultative workshops they developed a first draft of that interim training pathway we then conducted further consultation with other stakeholders to gather the input in further refining that training pathway so that is a proposal and a piece of work that will be presented to the project control board on the 10th of December so speaking about the 10th of December there is the project control board presentation day where all the working groups will have selected representatives who will present their group's resolutions as well as their group proposals to the project control board for discussion and consideration thank you everyone for your time it's been a pleasure to be able to share with you an update on what's happening in the AFAC space so thank you Jason Thanks for that update Brad and the information on where we're at with the AFAC peer review and I look forward to your updates and information as it becomes available Ian lots of chatter and lots of discussion about the dodge I know a lot of people like seeing history in particular old fire trucks so 1938 dodge yes I was wrong chief the captain of the local brigade got quite miffed at me but I was told that the 43 on the number plate which confused me is actually the brigade number so I apologise for being very special in front of you I have so originally when the dodge was found again it was actually owned by a gentleman by the name of Paul Jenkins who happened to be the captain of Sebastopol at the time and Paul Jenkins tried to donate the dodge to Ballarat Fire Brigade but was unable to so he actually sold the dodge to them for a nominal fee of $1 in front of me I've actually got the very dollar which he promptly donated back to the brigade with a little plaque so I might hold that up for the camera and that's how Ballarat Fire Brigade actually was able to retain or regain possession of the dodge that you see behind us wow absolutely amazing so not only did they get a truck but they got their money back they did money guarantee it's the sort of history that keeps people sort of involved and engage more about about Fire Brigade because Fire Brigade has a very long and honourable tradition dating right back and as I said before particularly the CFA as before we went live this evening we were watching a slideshow and you commented on a few of those photos I did so there was one with two La France ladders which were parked out of the front of the station there was also one with a manual fire appliance pulled by a lovely Dapplegrey horse and I actually asked if it was Larry which is a very famous horse that was up at Ballarat City Fire Brigade so yeah there's just lots of history and this used to be known as Ballarat East and we're only about 100 yards from where the Ballarat East Town Hall was so yeah and you just think people can't see it but you've still got the Charthouse out the side here I believe so yes the tower is still intact and there is a twin tower that was the old Ballarat City fire station up in Sturt Street it's now a real estate agent I believe now but that was how they used to look out over the city and see where the fires were well before Esther and Triple O and all the rest of it well thanks for filling us in there, I said a lot of interest and if you are travelling around and do happen to come past Ballarat Fire Station and the roller doors are up with the doors open I do encourage you to pop in say g'day to the crew and have a look at some of the history in this place and let them tell you the story of the Ballarat Fire Brigade because it is something that is very special to CFA and Victorian communities Jane back on to training USI, what is it and why is it important so the USI is just an acronym for the unique student identifier which allocates a number to every single student that you are supposed to carry with you for life which means that all of your training records are updated and you carry those training records against that number it's that unique identifier interesting because when the USI came about a few years ago there were actually some of the public safety agencies that didn't want a USI so for example in police there was a huge campaign because human source and undercover operatives couldn't have a USI because that would be allocated against for example your date of birth and where you were living and so forth but in general the federal government has signed off on the USI so currently if you are an RTO that's been accredited by ASQA as the regulator that takes care of most of the states and territories within Australia then you must allocate a USI but for the State of Victoria that still uses the VRQA and for WA that still uses the TAC council we are not required yet to have a USI but I know that there's a significant piece of work underway currently with the manager of the LMS to have a look at what are the possibilities for us in the future with our vendor that actually supports the LMS to introduce a USI for all of our students Excellent, thank you and that's a great piece of information particularly around the nuances between Victoria and Western Australia and the other states and territories under ASQA. Another question here from Don where are we at with driving courses drive on road, drive off road he's had members waiting for 18 months. Yes and Don look I wish I could say to you it's going to happen overnight but the truth is it won't. So I'll just take you back a step here for us it's really about ensuring that we've got proper doctrine in place and then having the training developed that reflects the doctrine. So that's what we did earlier this year we got about 14 of our driving experts around the table and we looked at the doctrine in the first instance which was really important for us. Now that's in the stages of completion in fact if I recall correctly there's a couple of workshops for the driver cohort to get together either this week or next week with Rowan Gordon responsible for the operational doctrinal piece. From there we'll make sure that the final pieces of the puzzle is put into place for driver drive vehicles under operational conditions is actually the course that you're referring to there. So there's a couple of components that have been finalised but the policy and legislation component has not yet been finalised and we're working on that. As far as off road goes I think we have to start distinguishing between skills acquisition and skills maintenance and I think a lot of the conversations around driving currently rests on how can I make sure that those people who have done a course can actually maintain those skills or refresh those skills or have some professional development. So the team knows that this is a current priority all of the other deputies Rowan sitting next to me indicated to me that that is a primary priority for us right now. I do just want to put it in perspective and say folks we've got three driver instructors and then we have all of our driver educators. So we are working as a cohort on those particular units to try and make sure that we can get them across the line for you. Just as far as off road sorry but there's a fair bit of information in that question. As far as off road goes it is important to note that those three units particularly in relation to heavy vehicles is actually not part of the public safety training package. They are part of transport and logistics. So transports and logistics training package has just been updated and those units have just become superseded on the 24th of October this year which means again a transition process for us. The difference here is that it was done by transport and logistics not by public safety so we will have to ensure that our training packages now comply with those heavy vehicle units that have been reviewed by other partners not ourselves. Absolutely so let's talk about RTO let's talk about training packages and that sort of stuff because I'm getting the vibe through the chat obviously our members are very passionate about training and they're just not happy at the moment and we've heard that loud and clear and we're really trying to as I said unscramble a lot of things that have been happening over many many many years A we've changed externally imposed upon CFA but also I guess some changes within CFA that were made with the best intentions at the time but ultimately have had unintended consequences now that we've gotten further down down the track but so we had a workshop last Friday with the deputy chiefs and yourself we came in and we we asked ourselves so there's 200 units on our scope absolutely mammoth there wouldn't be too many other RTOs in the country that has that size of scope and that adds to the issue because every single one of those packages needs to be updated, benchmarked rejig to ensure that it's compliant with the VRQA standards but also aligned to the public safety training package so myself and the deputies asked I guess yourself the question why are we delivering public safety training packages for everything that we do or can we just take a simple and practical approach to introducing enterprise training packages and skills packs so we've had that conversation so talk us through I guess what you're thinking is in this space and how you foresee our scope looking into the future but also getting that mix right between using the public safety training package competencies and complying with all the requirements of the VRQA and Co as having an enterprise training package delivered and certified internally within CFA Thank you Chief, look it's a very good question and I do just want to say I've tried to monitor some of the comments coming in here I think what is important to understand is the critical mass of 200 packages is almost too large for us to manage so I think we all need to take a step back and ask ourselves what training do we really need to deliver and what is training over time people thought might have been a good idea for us to deliver but is actually just not required because what it's doing is it's creating a lot of white noise in the system and that means we're not necessarily always working on the priorities that we should be working on so one of the exercises that I took the Chief and the other DCOs through last week was to have a look at our scope of registration and actually talk about what units of competency should we be delivering as enterprise training and what should we be delivering as on our scope aligned to national units of competencies and that in fact talks to some of the AFAC working groups that's also currently looking at the scope of registration so the governance working group there that has many of our volunteers on that working group is also looking at the scope of registration but I think in general what I'd like to say is training is currently not in the space that it could be there is a lot of room for opportunities here and it's really important for us the truth of the matter is folks I only have so much resources to do so much work for you I'm not in the business of band-aiding anything I've now lived with the CFA for a while and I think if we now fix anything we need to fix it to make it future proof for quite a long period of time and that's why it's really important for me that we do and undertake the reviews and the development properly I don't over promise and under deliver when people ask me will we have all of these training packages ready my answer is no we won't because we need to do it properly we need to benchmark it we need to properly consult it with all of our stakeholders and all of our partners but what has been important for me is that OD&T does not set the priorities we don't decide what training packages we'd like to work on or develop or review that's normally a conversation that we consult with different groups on so we consult with the Joint Training Committee a fantastic committee working with us that has many of our volunteer trainers and assessors on that committee we work with the deputies, we work with the chief we generally ask our instructors our ACFOS as well and then we also have a look at the RTL Governance Committee and jointly they decide what the training priorities are right now that we need to work on so in summary the chief I just would like to say this the chances of me being able to develop a training package that every single one of you 55,000 members are 100% happy with is probably zero so I'm trying to work on training packages that meets the requirements of the majority of our volunteers that's where I think we need to focus our attention to ensure that we deliver the best possible training that we can but I do just want to acknowledge that our trainers and assessors do a lot of the heavy lifting our instructors do a lot of the heavy lifting and I know that we've asked for your patience in terms of training I hear all day long I get over 100 emails a day and many of them are people feeling very unhappy and with good reason about the fact that we're not delivering the training packages yet that we could be but we are working as hard and as fast as we potentially can for you and I think that's the that's the reality and I know a lot of our members know we don't duck the hard questions we're also not going to meet here and BS our members either are is the reality is we can't get everything up and running overnight there is a need to do this and as you said I've given the instruction about focus on structural training that needs to be delivered we've got a focus on driving and a focus on crew leader and some of those other as you say important courses that suit the majority of our members that's what I'm hearing when I'm out in the brigades about needing those types of training courses urgently and that's coming through in the chat here tonight one of the things I did want to point out and a comment around I guess what are we doing for the rural brigades and a bit of a thing we've been talking about urban and structural and standards and that sort of stuff it was one of the things out of the AFAC peer reviewer and I know Jen you and the team are working on a training pathway and part of that training pathway is fundamentally looking at what are the foundational skills that an individual needs to operate in an environment that is tailored to their brigades risk environment and that is actually meaning that we're looking at a potential where GFF is not going to necessarily be the starting point for a lot of our rural brigades we're actually going to have a different foundational skills package that will be tailored to their needs. Do you want to touch on where we're thinking obviously a lot of consultation we will need to involve the VFBV and talk to our members but I guess what I am signaling tonight and what we have been asked for is GFF we've heard loud and clear it's working for some, it's not working for all and particularly those brigades in rural areas in the Wimmerer those sort of places we have listened and we're working on I guess a foundational skills package aren't we we certainly are chief so I just want to give a quick shout out here to the AFAC training pathway working group who's done a huge amount of work on the draft training pathways which we currently have and I think it's really important just to understand that we've had a lot of different opinions on having a foundation sort of set of skills as opposed to the GFF there's a lot of different views around it there's a cohort of people that feel very strongly that we should have that there's a cohort of people that feel very strongly that we shouldn't do that and at this point in time we're busy with our consultation so in fact last week Sunday we spent the day with the joint training committee and we had lots of really robust discussions about whether we should or should not have that so we're in the midst of consultations and on the 10th of December the project control board meeting where the volunteers responsible for the training pathway working group will actually present their views to the project control board in as far as that particular classification goes yep so a lot of again a lot of discussion on the conversation here around the need for greater communication out to the membership about what's happening with training and that's why we're dedicated tonight as a first specifically on training matters we have been talking and you're looking at how best to try and communicate with our membership where things are up to with training about where packages are at where AFAC peer review stuff is out in the light it's a bit of a challenge for us isn't it because we get criticised sometimes for sending too much information out and likewise we get the opposite in terms of not enough but again I want to assure our members it is very much front of mind for us in how we can present that information out to our membership because we acknowledge that districts can't get to all brigades all the time and we need to think of that a medium to be able to allow people to get that update whether it be members online or regular up.org I'm actually thinking Jean we probably need training to be a bit of a regular forum agenda item again for you to be able to give an update on where things are where things are at so in fact ladies and gentlemen tonight I will give you my commitment every month we will have a video of Jean providing you an update of training and where things are up to with the training environment to obviously keep the lines of communication open you mentioned before we have gone through an audit a VRQA audit looking at the CFARTO and how we went and tonight we have a our manager of governance who has put together a bit of a package for us telling us about the CFA's VRQA audit and some information around the outcomes of that so over to you Kirstie. Hi I'm Kirstie, manager of quality and evaluation in the CFA operational doctrine and training team. My role is to ensure compliance to standards as a registered training organisation as an RTO CFA is bound to comply with regulations to ensure quality training delivery the question I get asked most is why are we an RTO? I want to answer that by saying there are three very good reasons for CFA to continue being an RTO training is being delivered to an agreed industry standard it allows our members to work alongside other public safety agencies or across borders which means we're interoperable and finally it allows us to align with the vision of the CFA board of a highly skilled operational response agency we know that sometimes there's a different point of view because when you train to a national standard you must comply with that standard still ultimately we think it's vital for us to maintain focus on high quality industry standard training we know our members are highly skilled but we can only make that claim with a standard indicating that they've met it our ability as an RTO to train to a nationally recognised standard means that we can objectively say to the Victorian community you are in the hands of true professionals CFA must re-register as an RTO every five years I'm proud to say we recently had our re-registration audit which highlighted some opportunities for improvement the teams across CFA are working through a plan to action the recommendations this work aims to contribute to quality training delivery and we hope to have it finalised by mid December I would like to shout out to three key OTT partners without whom we couldn't deliver any training the first goes out to our colleagues in the regions the MLDs, LEADS CLDs and ALDs the second group I'd like to recognise are the instructors who bring operational experience into courses allowing us to present high quality practical training and finally to our trainers and assessors who give up their time to train new members and upskill others within their brigades without you we cannot do this I want to leave you all with a reminder that the CFA RTO doesn't start and end at head office it's a team sport we're all in this together and on behalf of CFA training we are excited to continue to deliver quality training across the state and ensure that it is fun engaging and a positive experience for all back to you Jason thank you Kirstie for that information and update on the VRQA order just a quick observation and picking up on a comment and thanks for the observation in the chat this evening I guess making the comment that we've only got 250 people watching live this evening that is right generally over the course of producing the volunteer forum live on the evening we generally have anything between 250-300-400 people watching including those in our live audience what I take away and what's great to see is by the end of the week people get access to it and we generally have about 2-3,000 people watch the volunteer forum in the days preceding the live broadcast so thank you very much for the observation this evening but we are getting lots of people watching it and we want lots of people to share our live forums because that's how we want to answer the questions of our members and provide them with relevant updates so we just saw Kirstie talk about the order any thoughts or final words on the order and where we're at? thank you chief so the VRQA conducted its re-registration order which is just normal general practice after some years the auditor was a very good auditor and we've received the final audit report general practice is that any organization has about 28 days to have a look at addressing some of those action items that flows from the audit so in the audit itself there were very little surprises for us we knew going in together with our members our regional partners I should say the MLD's the CLD's and the leads and so forth we spoke to them as our partners and I think any of those items that were raised were a surprise to us so currently Kirstie as well as the MLD's are working tirelessly towards the 15th of December that's actually our deadline date to ensure that we've made the rectifications that the VRQA has asked for on a side note we were very grateful that it came in before Christmas which means hopefully both the MLD's and their teams and Kirstie's team can have a bit of a rest theme but a lot of work happening in the background right now to ensure that those rectifications are made Awesome and again picking up in the chat a lot of comment around I guess some of the issues that people have found within training packages and discrepancies and the like I do encourage you I've raised those with your MLD, your CLD and if all else fails again I know your inbox is full already but training at CFA because if we don't know about these things we can't fix them and we absolutely we want and need to get training for our members so we encourage people to let us know what's going on there we have a question from our live audience and we've got Peter from Dales over to you Peter You mentioned before about the wording of the training packages changing to a must how's that going to affect people that already got those qualifications? Thank you so that's a really good question it doesn't affect people who have already got a qualification so I think the important thing to remind yourself here is once you've attained a competency you've attained it, it's yours forever no one can take it away, it's yours you get to use it but for any new members that we need to train in those training packages, likely what we will see from a practical point of view is that some of those courses will be slightly longer because if there's more material written into those units of competencies it generally affects the numbers of hours that we need to train in so please for all of the members who already have those particular units of competencies there is absolutely nothing there to be concerned about or worry about although if we have any members who would like to transition to POA 19 we can certainly have a look at gap training to make sure that most of our members have the most up-to-date unit of competency that they can possibly hold but a really good question, thank you Thank you Peter, a fantastic question I've got a comment here from Chris probably to yourself Ian and Bill a quick shout out to the trainers you do a great job, it's a tough gig and a lot of pressure and the effort that they put in is amazing a couple in particular go well above and beyond good job, so well done because it is a bit tough isn't it because your volunteer availability means that training is typically out of hours and well into the evening and I know Crosy you do a lot of evening work at the training at Central Hounds as well and yeah it is a bit tough sometimes isn't it it is and what we also have to recognise is our trainers and assessors that are volunteers if you look at their commitments outside of their training and assessing role most of them are usually high up in the BMT or the group management team so a number of our trainers are lieutenants, captains, deputy group officers so we are very cautious about overburdening them with training so to hear that response from one of the members is very heart warming so thank you I'd just like to add Chief too that while there is a bit of a workload to it what we do is more than made easier by learning development teams within regions they all put all the packages together so we just we get the kits and deliver them but without that support and back up it make our job so much harder and look there is no denying people are frustrated so it's not about singing all rainbows and lollipops I was one of them but we are working through some challenges and issues and genes outline those and we'll continue to provide updates to our members on that but what amazed me when I first come into CFA and in fact in a couple of days time, nine days time in fact would be six days time that couldn't count will be my second year anniversary here with CFA is the amazing a props facilities that our volunteers can get access to quality of the instructors particularly central Highlands and the other campuses our mobile props and the like what's your experience with using those facilities and getting volunteers to train in them I guess we're very lucky with the newest in the state here in Milan and to have that world-class facility and it's literally at our doorstep so district 15 around the area we are very very lucky and I know that the calendar is pretty full that the development team are really sort of trying to fit as much as they can so we're very lucky to have that support and the ability to train with the best of what we've got absolutely Rowan you've got a BEMTEC facility in your region it would be pretty great to have that asset absolutely so we've got Pennhurst which is down near Hamilton so in district 5 Pennhurst small team running that through so Darren and the team doing a fantastic job and if I think about the improvements at Pennhurst in the last couple of years particularly around you know catchment of water but also the hard standing the pad the props that are used you know it's not quite the central Highlands but I have to say the effort and the teamwork and the passion that goes into that training ground alone puts it on a par with any other one and I know the level of pride from the team down there is fantastic I was lucky enough to go down there with Paul Ramgers team so part of my leadership team took half a day down there with Paul's team and we got on the pad and not quite as agile as we used to be and as active but just to be able to bring anyone in from any level just to do basic firefighter training is just fantastic and the more we can use those facilities the better. Another great question here and some commentary around courses and training of courses and I guess a question here or a comment more so about certain brigades being restricted or from their opinion is restricted from doing certain training courses due to their brigade classification what's your experience with that? So we've probably heard tonight how sought after training is we do need to focus on training against the skills mix or the community risk that sits within an area and understanding the brigades cross over and there's some cross-pollination of risk across brigade boundaries but the focus is to ensure that we're getting the brigades that respond to that risk to the appropriate training which unfortunately means that some brigades sitting at a lower risk profile may not get that opportunity to do that training. And that may extend to also a lot of conversation in the chat around low voltage fuse removal and the fact that it can't be found on the learning hub and it's happening out there talk us through I guess how low voltage fuse removal came to be and why the training has been rolled out the way that it is. So low voltage fuse removal was an adoption or suppose of previous training that was provided so we had a bit of a gap in low voltage fuse removal training with some change in regulations I believe. A package was put together and that's rolled out through the safety compliance training so the work that Gary Cook's team leads supported by Jean's team they've rolled out training based on the risk of community so not every brigade sorry we can't roll the gear equipment and training out to every brigade so there's a mosaic of brigades that have that skill when the brigades put their hand up and accept through conversations with the district have been identified they provided the training I think we need at least three members per brigade to then roll out the equipment for that brigade so it's no longer just go and get the equipment we'll give you the training it's a bit more of a consolidated package of equipment training and the right risk environment. Absolutely a lot of conversation again in here around access to training knowing when training courses are on and the like and I've got to say some pretty good observations from my perspective anyway around the need or why do I need to go to multiple areas in the organisation to seek training and get approval for training they're not talking about region and ODT it's more of other functional areas within the organisation as well and one of the things that we have done recently is moved where LMS is sitting and LMS really needs to be our one stop shop for understanding training and development no matter what it is booking and enrolling so we've took some opportunity to sit with Kay Pausy the manager of our learning and management system as well as Brendan Okay our chief information officer to talk about the movement of LMS out of training and into ICT and I'll throw to Brendan and Kay now to talk about what that means for us. Thanks chief yes we've brought the learning hub and the learning management system into ICT and we're helping to drive some improvements in that the key things really is to make it user friendly easier for the volunteers and the members to use to get more out of it Kay and her team have come across into ICT and are leveraging off the other people we have in the team and how are you finding the move Kay? It's really great a lot of support from the other members in ICT so that's been really fantastic and the ability to start working on some real innovations in the LMS connecting it up with other systems so that'll be really exciting and what are the key areas improvements that people will notice as we move forward? We're working on a number of initiatives one of those would be looking at the first aid space so we know that we've shifted Vendors and in that shift we've got a little bit of a backlog on the entry of the data from the new Vendor so we are looking at making a direct connection with the Vendor so that those changes we've made in real time when people complete training and assigned off with the Vendor and that would be sent across to the LMS so that's one exciting thing and I think the other thing we're looking at is online assessment so looking at opportunities to leverage the LMS to create some of the assessment online so that people can complete that in the classroom at least to begin with so that's very exciting and we're working with IDT on that. It really is about making the learning hub and the LMS easier to use to simplify it but also more efficient so that the data and the assessments flow straight through it's up on the records and people have got access to it quicker. Yep absolutely and I think that we're also working on making it more user friendly in the sense that we're looking at an update perhaps to the software to a little bit more of a modern look and we are also working on having some sessions that we're running for GMTs and GMTs because we know that there's often a lot of change in that space just some virtual sessions you can jump on to the learning hub and book in for a session where we'll run through the system and how to put in drills how to look at records for your members and just to make it a little bit easier for people to navigate around the system. Yeah and by being virtual sessions they can get on anytime do it at a time that suits them so again and working with the rest I think the ICT team to have that user interface the user experience a lot more friendly Yeah absolutely fantastic Thanks Kay welcome to the team and we look forward to driving the learning hub forward for all our members Very exciting thank you Back to you Chief Thank you Kay and thank you Brendan for that update on the learning management system Again video has triggered a lot of conversation around the learning management system and we know it is a frustration for people as well particularly around user intuitiveness and the rest of it I know our Chief Information Officer is very big on the user experience and so I know there's going to be a lot of work done on that LMS system to make sure that it meets our needs today and well into the future so which is fantastic great to see Gentlemen how has training evolved I guess from the time when you first walked into your first CFA station I guess for me it was pretty much on the job training I joined up in 1982 and it was pretty much rocket the station and signed up here's a pair of overalls good luck to you so it was pretty rudimentary but today and I think it's about the frustrations of what's going on and as Jean quite rightly said there's a lot of packages there to deliver but from myself as both a volunteer and a train assessor I'd much rather have this level of detail and skills to know that we've been trained to the best of our ability absolutely so because I guess the reality is and we probably do need to get a little bit of detail here is there's been a few watershed moments in this day involving CFA members that has led to a couple of key decisions being made around training and one of which was the tragedy at Linton Ian your thoughts to that Linton actually occurred about 10 years after I joined and I remember Vividly being in my uncle's kitchen he was the group communications officer out at Bunanyong and we were listening to the fire we never thankfully heard the tragedy but I'm a very much similar story to Bill I got handed a pair of overalls had to buy my own boots I did get a helmet that was second hand and it was it was all on the job training and probably another watershed moment for myself was actually seeing the loss of the Linton tragedy when I was on recruits in 2001 down at the Belan facility and if anyone wants to argue about training and the level of training and things like GFF if you ever saw that the result of that then you wouldn't even question it absolutely but it's not only Linton and we saw last five seasons a tragic accident in South Australia in fact the CFA members in fact one of our members was a sector commander during that tragic time involving a tree and unfortunately trees are a major hazard for our firefighters and again led to tree hazard awareness I guess what's your thoughts to why it's important that we do these things for the safety of our people was the first part the feeling the pain that comes with you know, notifying being with the family members and trying to explain or rationalise what occurred is extremely difficult but we can't bring those people back so I know that there are different challenges in training and people have different opinions of how far we need to train and what we need to do but I can say the family members that I've spoken to post Linton family members as I'm in South West their comments around training and the need to make sure people are skilled up is extremely evident and you know it'd be nice if we could turn back time and have them with us today but we can't and the message I get from the family is if there's a legacy that comes from their passing it is that we are a better place to protect our people I don't know for myself personally it is to be frank quite gut-wrenching every year at our firefighters memorial they have to stand up and read the names of every CFA member who has died in the line of duty and to be quite frank there is just too many of them and I'm yet to make it through without having that realisation within myself and having that emotional reaction to pages and pages of members who have died in the line of duty and sacrificed to their community so if training is one of the things that we can do to ensure that our members get home to your family and friends then I am personally all for it and that's the reason why we have the Chief Officers minimum requirements we have Peter back from Dalesford that also wants to share on a reflection and thoughts Linton is a very good segue into what I wanted to say I joined in 1984 came to this district no sorry I joined in 1980 came to this district in 1985 I was at Linton I had been a training officer prior to that in a brigade as a volunteer and I picked up a job in training in this district as a result of the Linton inquest I worked with the volunteers that went down to the inquest I did that as a volunteer role and was passionate about training when we went from two people to 16 people in this district in training across 15, 16, 17 that passion over the years was lost and I decided I needed to get out of training so 13 years after that I was training went to community safety on this economy when I had to go back to training I quit because I didn't think I could cope with not being able to support the volunteers I attended the session at VemTech that Bill spoke about earlier and my passion was renewed because the new people in training that are doing the roles now have that passion and they are volunteer focused so hopefully they give hope to the people that are out there and that are looking at training and looking at becoming trainer assessors and I wish them luck Thank you for your thoughts Peter and sharing those insights it's very valuable to hear from you and I hear that passion in your voice I've got the same passion for community education as well Absolutely and there's been a lot of discussion in the chat tonight around the importance of community engagement and education in fact I was with our community engagement teams earlier on in the week where I emphatically said to the community education community engagement is just as important as operations in fact it's part of operations why because it's about firefighter safety whether they're making sure that a development application meets code and requirements whether it be educating people to prepare their homes, have that defender space for firefighters or even having them in the awareness to know what to do have that bushfire survival plan in event of a fire so that again when firefighters turn up they can do what they do knowing that the occupants of the home are well looked after and taken care of so thank you very much for sharing your insights this evening I know community safety works from programs work because after the Scotsman fire both Heather and myself have had people come to us and say we did what you said and that's the only reason we survived Yeah absolutely Thank you very much for your insights there it's very valuable and a lot of people online have appreciated your thoughts, feelings and comments around that so thank you for sharing this evening We touched on the Central Highlands facility and some of the great campuses that we do have around the state we're investing constantly in those particularly around environmental compliance, water management and those sort of things but there are other technologies that we're also embarking upon in training and one of those is virtual reality and many of our members may have seen the virtual reality equipment at Marupna during the last two state championships can you tell me more Jean around how virtual reality can be used in skills maintenance acquisition and the like Thank you Chief, virtual reality is a very important mechanism to train people in almost a simulated real life scenario but at the same time not expose them to any risk which I think is very important so we certainly we've got XVR that Paul Cockrell is currently rolling out for us and we've got the flame virtual reality equipment that Chris Taylor is working with as well and I know that the Brigades often book time with those two individuals to roll out those sort of digital components to our members I just wanted to if I may just quickly reflect on some of the comments around Linton and the comments that Peter made and I just wanted to say that that's why I'm in training personally that's why I'm not bandaining anything because I have in previous roles had similar experiences where I talk to family members where their loved ones have passed and they talk to me about the fact that they would accept nothing less than the best standard of training so I actually hold that responsibility very dear to my heart and so does my team so we might be a little bit slow folks enrolling things out but we're taking this very seriously so Peter can I just say thank you for your commitment in coming back one of the ordered findings was not that we had low quality training one of the ordered findings was high quality training with some non-compliances and I think that sees everything about our instructors and our trainers and our volunteers those volunteer trainers and assessors and the instructors, the experience that they have and the added level of training that they bring to the training packages that we put together that is actually where the quality training comes from and I do just want to advocate and say education and training is a team sport we can do as much as we want within OD&T but without our colleagues, our MLDs the CLDs, the leads without our trainers and assessors without our instructors without the pad staff operating the Vimtex without any one of those pieces training obviously exactly, training falls down so I view this as a team sport and I'm so keen to do proper consultations with everybody who matters in this pipeline of training absolutely, thanks Jean and we have Kaila here from from Dalesford and I know we see Kaila a bit on some of our CFA promotional videos and the like so thanks for popping up Kaila and you're going to share an insight for us yes I am I kind of just got dogged on it but I just wanted to say that I'm currently training to be a trainer assessor and I was kind of told to give my view on it and I was highly encouraged to join, especially by Cross, kind of pushed me off the deep end into it but the best thing about learning to be a trainer assessor so far, getting out of the skills it's just getting to meet all our volunteers I'm told to be I know a bit but I don't know as much as everyone on the ground because we all know different things and we all learn from each other I can go to a training a skills maintenance day or a training day and teach someone but I don't walk I don't walk into knowing everything because I will walk away learning just as much as what they all learn that's the best thing about our trainer assessors no one's the big top gun because we all walk away learning because in this job we never stop learning so yeah, it's pretty awesome awesome and I guess no truer word absolutely and how proud is it for you to see Kayla standing up there absolutely awesome absolutely awesome and I can only echo what Kayla said and for all of our trainer assessors that have given up their time I'm proud of every one of them because they make our job a heck of a lot easier absolutely and and you must meet some fantastic people I know I meet some fantastic people when I travel the state talking to brigades and meeting members but as a trainer and assessors as an upcoming training assessor you must meet some fantastic people absolutely and one of my key introductory statements is if you're not here to have fun then you need to leave because it's the only thing we've got to be there if they don't come and enjoy the training and get involved and want to come back and do more training then we're not doing our job absolutely well thanks for your insights Kayla and sharing your story and good luck and keep it up it's a fantastic job and it's great to see you going well thank you you also learn some pretty bad jokes along the way that's that's my Angus my colleague Angus my colleague and bad jokes very good congratulations and well said Kayla and thank you for your insights there because you know members like Kayla they are a future really aren't they in terms of identifying enthusiastic young members who want to get involved and want to make a difference in this CFA which is all about them so thank you ladies and gentlemen there is so much happening on in the chat that I know many of the team the ODT team Jean they have been their fingers must be almost to the bone or smoke coming off their keyboards have been frantically trying to answer some of the questions online particularly the ones that I haven't managed to to get to so thank you and a big shout out to our ODT team as we said I think we'll do a monthly update I know we need to make sure that our membership feel that they are informed and understand what's happening in the training space couple of things for me that I guess to touch on just in closing some general updates just a general reminder to our brigades across the state that your Regulation 61 financial return is due into the CFA by the end of December so it's just a friendly reminder from your kind folks at the finance department and I'm sure our FOBS will be in contact with brigades that are yet to do that but just a general reminder there and likewise today we Natalie and myself shot out some information about the opening of the online claim form process for volunteer reimbursements where you've incurred cost associated with deploying to the Victorian flood emergency you have incurred costs whilst being deployed out of your pocket you are eligible for a reimbursement from the Victorian government information will be available on the members online portal as of tomorrow and I encourage members to get online and understand and have a look at that details are being provided so just a shout out for our members and for those that have as I said incurred those costs the opening at time does come at personal sacrifice not only in time but also in cost and this is something that I guess I'm going to try and do to alleviate some of those costs associated with the deployments and I know many volunteers have been on three or four tours of duty so thank you for those members and Bill you've got a bit of a shout out too Yes I'll give the brigade a bit of a plug here for the Barrett Heritage Week in May we'll have opened in the past and I'm sure it will be this year too that the brigade will be open for tours and the like so if anyone's interested in the dodge or the magnificent trophies you've got here jump online and have a look for the Barrett Heritage Festival and they can pop in and visit the station Thanks Chief Thank you and a big thank you once more to Mark and the gang here at Ballarat for allowing us to invade their station so that we can come into you wherever you be across the globe or in your living room or wherever your brigade station to watch the volunteer forum so thank you Mark and thank you to the team here at Ballarat a big shout out and thanks to those online from CFA Management again that have been there to answer your questions so I very much appreciate for that and thank you to the panel Rowan, Jean for your time out this evening it hasn't been an easy one I will be honest there's some pretty hard hitting questions in there and we've touched on some pretty hard hitting topics but as we've always said we won't dodge the hard questions on the volunteer forum where we can and there's been so many tonight it's not funny but I think it's really important and I have to stress that if you do have concerns if you do pick up those issues or whatever your CLD, your MLD or contact training at training at CFA dot big dot gov dot au so Jean over to you for any final thoughts on this evening's subject material I think as a final thought just for all of our members out there training is so important we can't turn out operation if we haven't been trained properly we'd like to work with you on this we understand the frustration but the team is ready and willing to work as hard as we possibly can and I do want to just reiterate that comment that training is a bit of a team sport we cannot do this without our regional partners we cannot do this definitely without our educators and that includes both our trainers and assessors and our instructors we cannot do that without our pad staff so there's so many different moving parts to this and to each and every one of those folks a very big shout out particularly those folks who deliver the training and provide that additional quality sort of mechanism to it we cannot tell you how grateful we are so please bear with us we will get there we don't give up easily in OD&T so we're in it for the long run thank you chief thank you Jean and once again a big thank you to those behind the camera Martin, Naomi and I call him my executive producer Brad Thomas who produces together every month he loves it well secretly hates it when I say that but the comms team do a fantastic job pulling this together and making sure that we're able to produce a great product again so that we can talk to our membership and in a two-way interactive session so again thank you very much team for your efforts this evening it's greatly appreciated well that brings us to the end of November's volunteer forum a volunteer forum in December will let you know what the dates are so obviously we've got Christmas and a few other things coming up so we'll need to pick an appropriate time but otherwise thank you again to the panel thank you to the live audience and thank you to you that have taken the time to tune in and watch this month's volunteer forum have a good evening