 Community Gate from State Forward. I'm Andrew South, I'm the first to turn to the Noble Park Fire Brigade. The site we're here is Matthew Pong, the Gate Support Officer for District Gate. As I mentioned in the preamble, so you're getting started. This is a strategy of which we're initiated in the Greater Danny-Nong area within District Data CFA. Specifically with the Noble Park Brigade, which we're looking at rolling out as far and wide as we possibly can. CFA, who we are, a volunteer and community-based organisation, a emergency services organisation. SES people in the room, are you able to, do you know your who we are statement? We had a, the previous session of which we had, there were a couple of SES people who did kind of know the basics of it. And our statement was very dissimilar, with the key word there, similar to what Craig Ipsen was talking about earlier, of that community and working towards that community connection. So who in the room actually knows their community demographic? So I've seen one hand so far. This is a census taken from 2011 of the Noble Park area. As you can see here, over 62.3% were born overseas. 58.6, speaking in the language of an English at home. So before we started this initiative, the Brigade, the Noble Park Brigade had 17 members, 17, 15 were mailed to a FEMA. All were born within Australia. The Brigade SDS was around 22%. For those who don't know what SDS is, we had a couple in the last session from other agencies. It's a service delivery standard, so it's a benchmark for our performance of service delivery to the community. With this initiative, there was three steps. The first step was engagement. The second step was education, and the third step was recruitment. So with the engagement, the first step we took was to seek help from the other agencies within our area, such as the Red Cross and Local Ames, to try to bridge that gap between us and the newly settled people in the community, such as Seoul Seekers and Refugees, and establish a bond with those agencies. So this site specifically saw a partnership arrangement with Red Cross where they financially supported the process of recruiting some members and also providing support in some other areas like development of locally settled people to be at the level where they could join the CFA. So one of the things in which we found initially when we engaged and started educating was that people coming from overseas saw CFA as being an authority, similar to a policing authority. So there was a bit of reluctance in actually engaging and saw the unathon as fairly intimidating and thought that there may be kind of repercussions in some areas but engaging the services of which CFA and SAACS as well provide to the community. So the more we've gone through education and engagement, we've been able to lower some barriers which are supported through the same stage 2 now, but the leads into stage 3 of the recruitment as well. So some of those key points were bilingual and translator, so bilingual signage. So similar to the first slide we had here in the production slide, on the front door of the fire station there's a safety measure saying that a smoke alarm saved lives. Underneath that we had a translator in the Vietnamese. We have several signage we can take around with us as well. It has different languages for different events. The third step was recruitment. So after the community's engaged about what the CFA does and who we actually are, the doors that open for those members to be recruited. Further education, specifically on the fact of brigade membership, so whether they be operational or operational, this is where that happens. So we educate them on what the brigade or the CFA is and what we do and we actually educate them on the roles that we're offering. Okay, so that is the third step in terms of alright, we're ready for recruitment. We've gone through education, engagement, establishing that connection now we're recruiting. The first thing that we need to do before we actually say it, we're going to do it, is make sure that brigade culture is inclusive and respectful of diversity. So all members need to be aware, follow brigade co-conducting values as well as CFA, co-conducting values. And also that members are generally open and inclusive and respectful for practices and traditions of other cultures. So that was one step of which was really drilled through to brigade. And then the second initiative which the brigade established was... So the brigade actually sought out a multicultural coordinator. So as a member of the brigade who was working with the local Red Cross, we actually brought her in as part of the brigade management team and her role was to be the link between the brigade and those members and those initial steps and to assist in any way that she could during the recruitment stage. So it's a pretty messy slide here so I'll be brief on this one. But a bit of background about Noble Park. Previous to rolling out this initiative, we had three applications in a six month period with zero members actually joining up. After we ran our information sessions, we ended up, we had 90 applications. So we're going from three to six months to 90. We had around 20 positions we wanted to fill with a target of about 25% of those positions being for females. So there's four steps there. So the first step was attending the information sessions so we ended up having five in total. Step two was the basic screening. So telephone call, one of the views was then followed with step three with the brigade management team. And then step four was to fill the paperwork. The important part of the process was that we didn't... It didn't actually say that nobody was accepted in terms of we had 20 come through. So it wasn't that we phoned the rest and said, sorry, you weren't successful. It was some work was required, some time was required. And we had the partnership with Red Cross and Ames in particular that allowed us to kind of move some members into some development and some process towards achieving membership at a later stage. So that's ongoing. And we're in a slide to come and we'll talk about where we're going from that. So this is where the paperwork's all done now. It's from the time of the recruit course. So we initially set the recruit course to run on one night during the week being a Thursday with an extra catch-up session. So those members who couldn't come could make up the time on a Sunday. All those who wanted extra training, they had come on Sunday as well. We had three instructors and two support members during the recruit course. So a lot of recruit courses, just one or two people standing at the front sitting with what we're doing today, feeding everyone the information. We actually had it so there's one person at the front and we had other members supporting those who were learning and going around the room and helping out when they need be. And it says their casual clothes, no uniforms. So it was nice and relaxed. We made them feel welcome. So we actually went and made shoes rack hook for them. They actually had some, we had some old yellow overalls out of the back from many years ago. We dusted off, got them clean, and we gave that to them. So they had a sense of being. They had a CFA hold, a CFA hold, because they felt part of the team. We also focused on team building exercises. And as opposed to a theory, a practical-based component of our training, we actually mixed it together. So some sessions were theory-based, and then a half-way through session, rather than some practical, mixed up a bit, get them more involved, get them more enthusiastic. So if you noticed in that photo, we've got our Chief Officer, UN Ferguson, who came out to assist. Oh, he actually led our firefighting. We had a significant amount of support from higher levels within CFA, which assisted with our retention and just the general feeling of support by the recruits at that grand level. And also from our catchment officer and group officer throughout the process, which was very beneficial. So moving to that support comment that was made just before Andrew, is that we didn't just... the standard recruit course in CFA, we kind of had our theory or practical training. And then at the end of the session, it's, okay, see you next Thursday, or see you next Sunday, or whatever day it may be. That was the general process of how courses up to this time had run. What changed with this course with this strategy was, okay, the course finished for the night. The next day, the recruit member would get a phone call. How are you going? How did you find last night? And they'd given the opportunity to give feedback and do it in a one-on-one environment where they didn't feel like they were falling behind the rest of the group. So I won't read through all of that up there, but those were some of the things of which we implemented to ensure that retention was there throughout the course. And it was very successful in terms of we haven't lost members. So those who remember one of the initial slides, which shows we had 17 members, after this initiative was completed, we actually ended up with 53 members, eight of those female and 45 males. We've gone from a brigade that was 100% born in Australia to now having 40% of our members born overseas. We now have 15 different languages spoken in our brigade, which also allows us to communicate better with our community. And the brigade SDS has gone from 22% to around the 70-80 mark. So there's been a big jump after this initiative. So importantly, looking back to the census data, which was at the start of the slide, you can see where the brigade is today. It is moving towards that census data, which is established in that community connection and essentially the brigade is representative of the community. So along with the operational stats there, the brigade is also very focused on continuing its community education engagement. A lot of multicultural events happen within the Greater Daniel area through council and other community bodies. So the brigade is out there and engaging and trying to be represented in as many situations as they can. And we've also had fairly good media publicity from both internal media within SAFE and also local media through the Daniel area. So that kind of finishes off the strategy of which has been implemented. I'll just check how much time we've got left for questions, Lindsay. How are we going for time, Lindsay? Sorry, how much time have we got? Ten minutes. Ten minutes? Okay. So that's kind of the basics of what we went through in terms of developing the strategy and implementing it into Noble Park. And as I said at the start, we're now looking at trying to make this a strategy which is available to everybody to work off what Noble Park has done. So if you have any questions now, they'll have you too. Yes, Frank? On the last slide there are two different potential strategies. Yes. So you're the first recruit or so you found sort of that initial interest once it's combined. Do you want to be done to prioritize the work we're doing? Well, the first thing I want to say with this is that from seeing a number of brigades and how they've gone through recruit courses, the strategies of which have been implemented in here have actually retained more than what a standard recruit course does. So during a recruit course, during the actual training, is one care where you lose people's interests. Who from Safe ASES has seen that before that you lose people during the training? So one of the key things of which we had in place was that contact. So particularly people who were newly settled into the Noble Park community, actually calling in and having them say, I feel like I'm behind the rest of the class. And you go, well, I've just made ten phone calls and they've all said that. So it's not you. We need to work with the team and move forward together. The other thing in which we did, Andrew was the lead instructor for the course, was Andrew saw that there was a group within the bigger group that was well probably ahead where the rest of the course was. So as we got to probably about weeks, six or so, it was quite clear that we needed to separate into two groups. One where there's a bit more support given to and there's another group where there was a quicker path to getting their competencies signed off. Do you have anything to add to that? At the front. Could you tell us a little bit about how it actually started and who involved in it, when you were developing this strategy and some of the challenges that you faced? Definitely, yeah. So the question for those at the back who may not have heard was can we go into who was involved in the strategy to begin with, who initiated and how we progressed to get the ball rolling essentially. The CFA over the last, probably about three years ago, had some funding from state government for a volunteer support project. I'm not sure, actually Steve might know it was at SES as well, did they? No. So it was the CFA and as part of that there was a resource at the state level which was focused specifically on engaging diverse communities. So that person kind of linked in with regional resources and established some kind of statewide partnerships which assisted us in local connections. It really kind of gave us the advice, the training and the understanding which we've kind of fed into this PowerPoint and discussion today of which we needed to know how to go about engaging our local resources. So that was key in terms of having that information. So then from there we went off and actually had meetings with our local Ames and Red Cross. We then established a grant as to where they needed support from. So they kind of in that agreement which we had subcontracted to CFA because they had funding from government also to try and move people who had newly been settled into the community into volunteer roles. So it worked for them and it worked for us. So it was very easy to get the ball rolling in terms of they had all these newly settled community members that they needed to put into volunteering roles and we wanted people for volunteering roles to assist with the brigade's operation, so it kind of fed in through that. We had support from CFA regional office and as I mentioned through there, even from the state and as high as our chief officer levels it was all a big team effort from each level within CFA. But if you're after some initial advice I'm happy to give some contact details and have a chat with you later. At the back. Just a quick question. I'll come out from you now. The biggest thing we're struggling with at the moment is a lot of older members that don't want to be doing training because they have this attitude of I'll be able to say if I have to do it the other issue we're having is how do we get them to get really interested back in training and really encourage them to pass what they have because they have some very valuable knowledge of that area. How do we get them to then re-engage with us? Okay, so that's not necessarily talking about diversity within the Brigade, it's more so about talking about some of the older members within the Brigade like passing on skills to younger members. Yeah, the reason I would say that is because we don't have a multi-culture sort of referral. And that's a standard thing you find across Brigades and that's where we spoke about I used the word barriers before the key thing of which we needed to do with Noble Park and what Andrew spoke about earlier is you've got a Brigade that was pretty much on the brink of being shut down in the sense that it was for about two or three months it was classed as unviable so something needed to be done which was a prompter for Noble Park to say well we need to look at other options so if in your situation you've probably got the Brigade going on alright in terms of its viability as in you haven't had a trigger point where you've had to have a significant change but this is where we need to look at the barriers that are up there and if that is something which is affecting your viability and you've got a multi-cultural diversity within you know then that's where we need to reduce those barriers and look at recruiting from those diverse communities because to be connected with the community to be reflective of community you need to have that community participate in the Brigade as well so there's some resources on our CFA Brigades online a lot of townships have been profiled as well and census data is available fairly regularly so maybe have a look and see what the community is like Any further questions? One of the things that might help there for you know that worked very well with Noble Park Brigade is they actually got a lot of the older members who actually had the experience doing one-on-one mentoring with individuals and that was a great way of getting those that have a lot of knowledge to be able to work on one individual person and that worked exceptional they could work at the speed that was required and then I think got a lot of motivation back into those older members too That's excellent, thank you for that We should give a welcome to ex-Captain Keith Packenham of the Noble Park Brigade as well Thanks Keith Final question? I'm just going to ask with the members you recruited for the operational did you also recruit for non-operational? So the question is do we recruit for non-operational or operational? So we opened it up to anything so really see we wanted operational so we actually said this is what we require but if you have if you have the need and the want you don't want to do that just yet that's fine we do have this option as well being an operational out of the 23 we ended up taking on we only have one member who's decided to be non-operational so the rest are all operational so that was actually a really good win on our part to be able to get that truck full and out the door so we do have that option open for them as well Any further questions? Definitely Just for anybody if you do have any further questions or otherwise we're going to be around for the next couple of days as everybody else is so feel free to come up and have a chat with us Thank you very much