1. Purpose and context

The purpose of this strategy is to explain what North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service’s Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team, is going to do to try and prevent harm, up until March 2025.

As a Fire and Rescue Authority, North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service has many legal responsibilities but in summary we must:

• Extinguish fires
• Protect life and property in the event of fires
• Rescue and protect people in the event of a road traffic collision
• Rescue and protect people in the event of other emergencies
• React to civil emergencies (for example a terrorist incident)
• Promote fire safety (for the purposes of prevention)

The Fire and Rescue National Framework also states that we must:

• Identify and assess the full range of foreseeable fire and rescue related risks in our area
• Make provision for prevention and protection activities and respond to incidents appropriately
• Work in partnership with communities and partners locally and nationally to deliver our service
• Be accountable to communities for the service we provide

There are many other factors which drive and impact our work.

2. Use of language

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service has over 700 employees and volunteers, so it is important when using terms that everybody has a consistent understanding of what we mean by certain words or phrases.

Prevention – The targeted action we take, or the targeted education we provide, to stop a specific problem or issue happening in the first place eg a Home Fire Safety Visit
Early Intervention – The targeted action we take at the earliest possible stages when a specific problem or issue occurs; either to stop if completely or prevent it from getting worse eg a Fire Safe Intervention
Safeguarding – The action we take to protect a citizen’s health, wellbeing and human rights; enabling them to live free from harm abuse and neglect eg making a referral for a resident following a concern
Engagement – The action we take to build trust and confidence (eg Station Open Day) or have a conversation to listen and learn from what others have to say (eg staff survey)
Communication –The action of telling something or giving a message to someone or a group of people, eg by issuing a newsletter or press release
Campaign – The co-ordinated series of targeted actions and activities we take to achieve a specific goal eg working as a whole service to deliver focused communications and engagement events and interventions to prevent motorcycle fatalities.

3. Objectives for prevention

As well as responding to calls for help, the Fire and Rescue Service must also try and prevent people from being seriously hurt or killed.

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service has finite resources (people, time, equipment and money) so it has to prioritise all of its prevention activity where it is needed the most. To do this it:

1. Uses data to better understand risk through a Community Risk Profile
2. Aligns resources to reduce risk using its Risk and Resource Model
3. Understands what matters to the public using the Fire and Rescue Plan

From this, we prioritise 4 objectives for prevention across our whole service. Together and by working with others, we will aim to:

• Prevent people from being seriously hurt or killed due to a fire in their home
• Prevent people from being seriously hurt or killed on our roads
• Prevent people from being seriously hurt or killed in our waters
• Reduce the impact of large-scale harm due to environmental events (eg wildfires)

We will deliver these 4 objectives through the individual and specific actions of prevention,
early intervention and safeguarding, whilst also contributing to our national duties (for example the Serious Violence Duty, Prevent Duty and the Public Sector Equality Duty).

4. Our commitments

Our Risk and Risk Model states that as a service we will continue to:

• Be clear, relevant and consistent in how we deliver prevention services
• Deliver our prevention services based on an evidence and intelligence-based approach to prioritise work
• Use a Public Health person-centred approach focussing on behaviour changes to influence risk and target our interventions accordingly
• Empower staff with the freedom and flexibility to make decisions, be creative and make the most of partnership working
• Hold staff accountable and responsible for the planning and effective delivery of prevention services by regular monitoring
• Ensure our staff have the necessary competencies and knowledge to deliver prevention services in a professional manner and to a high standard
• Collaborate with partners to identify those most at risk and work with them to reduce risk and improve safety
• Manage our performance in prevention to ensure we provide value for money

The Risk and Risk Model also states that as a service we will:

• Implement a new structure for prevention with new roles that provides career progression for staff
• Introduce and develop existing and future specialist role capabilities
• Provide more even access to prevention services across the county and more targeted delivery
• Utilise the Community Risk Profile to influence delivery plans and target activity to the right place and the right people
• Increase the use of On-call staff to deliver prevention activity in our more rural areas
• Develop the Public Safety Service across the Service area in conjunction with partners
• Utilise the National Fire Chiefs Council workstreams and Fire Standards to identify and adopt best practice

The Fire and Rescue Plan says that we must:

• Actively engage with all communities to identify need and risk and to reassure
• Work jointly as a trusted partner to prevent harm and damage, intervene early and solve problems.
• Deliver the Right People, Right Support every time
• Maximise efficiency to make the most effective use of all available resources
• Enhance positive culture, openness, integrity and public trust

5. Those most at risk

From being seriously hurt or killed due to a fire in their home:

• Those living in rented households
• Those living in flats 
• Those living in a household with 5 or more members
• Those living with dependencies (for example alcohol and/or other substances)
• Those who may experience more serious consequences due to living furthest from our fire stations (for example on the borders of our county)
• People who live in areas which experience higher levels of deprivation.
• Those not able to self evacuate, including:
   older people (65+) 
   people with mobility issues, individuals living people with ill health
   those who live alone

From being seriously hurt or killed on our roads:

• Driver error is a factor in 60% of killed and serious injury incidents 
• 57% of collisions where individuals are killed or seriously injured happen on 60 mph roads
  Males aged between 16-35
• 70% of road collisions in our area involve cars and 20% motorcycles
• Those aged over 70 (including motorcycle users)
• Motorcycles form 7% of traffic but account for 26% of killed and seriously injured casualties
• Males over 40 on high powered motorcycles
• Most motorcycle fatalities happen on single carriageway 60 mph roads during daylight hours

From being seriously hurt or killed in our waters:

• Those attempting to drive through flood water
• Those who have got into difficulty whilst taking part in sport and leisure activities
• Those who act based on thoughts of suicide
• High risk areas for flooding include parts of York, Malton and around Selby
• A significantly high proportion of water rescue incidents occur in western and southern areas of the county

From being harmed due to large-scale environmental events:

• Properties and areas that have been flooded before
• Locations which have already experienced wildfires
• Residential areas at risk of being impacted by wildfires

Our Community Risk Profile is a document which uses data to tell us about which people, and which geographical areas are most at risk.

6. Roles in prevention

Every single Firefighter in the country has a responsibility to inform and educate their community, to improve awareness of safety matters.

In North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, there are various individuals and teams across the whole Service who all have a responsibility to deliver prevention, early intervention and safeguarding. Because of this, it is important to understand how everybody works together to deliver these activities.

The Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team includes a Head of Function, a Station Manager, 3 Watch Managers, 2 Lead Community Safety Officers, 6 Community Safety Officers, a Youth Engagement and Schools Manager, and a Safeguarding Manager. The team also hosts the Public Safety Service and a Road Safety Co-ordinator (both of which are funded by North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and North Yorkshire Police).

The team’s main responsibilities are to:

• Explore and understand existing and emerging trends in relation to fire causes and applying learning into improving practice
• Manage the Service’s safeguarding function and ensure that all employees and volunteers are competent and confident to deliver their safeguarding responsibilities
• Work in collaboration with the Protection Team, to deliver the Service’s ‘Area of Strategic Focus’ to reduce risk and vulnerability and enhance community resilience
• Work with partner organisations to develop data-driven approaches to support targeted prevention activity
• Work with other organisations to create safe, efficient, and effective referral pathways
• Deliver specialist interventions (eg FireSafe) and provide advice and guidance
• Deliver ‘Person-Centred’ and targeted early intervention and prevention activity and interventions to reduce risk in rural areas
• Support the delivery and expansion of the Public Safety Service
• Ensure that operational crews across the Service have quality assured, evidence-based materials which are proven to make a difference, so that they can deliver targeted prevention activity to reduce risk in accordance with the Risk and Resource Model
• Ensure that all Firefighters and relevant other employees and volunteers have sufficient training to be competent and safe when delivering prevention and early intervention activity (including Post Incident Engagement)
• Co-ordinate a whole service ‘campaign’ approach through the provision of a calendar of campaigns and associated materials
• Support others to understand the impact of early intervention and prevention activities and interventions, and to apply local and national learning across the whole service
• Manage and co-ordinate prevention and early intervention equipment, overarching risk assessments and resources (such as Water Flumes)

Wholetime shift and day crewed stations

When they are not responding to incidents (or ensuring readiness to respond to emergencies) wholetime stations will:

• Use resources provided by the Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team to proactively deliver and record high-quality, targeted early intervention and prevention activity and interventions to reduce risk, in accordance with the Risk and Resource Model
• Utilise opportunities to learn about Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding (eg online learning modules or Home Fire Safety Visit training) to enable competency and credibility to deliver activity and interventions
• Support the Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team to understand what works and the impact of prevention and early intervention activity
• Ensure that all prevention interventions and community engagement activities are delivered to a safe and high-quality standard and are focused on the delivery of this strategy and the Risk and Resource Model
• Proactively deliver targeted campaign materials in accordance with the Prevention Campaign Schedule
• Deliver Post Incident Engagement (PIE) activity to reassure communities and to identify opportunities to deliver Home Fire Safety Visits, directly following an accidental fire or other incident in the home which requires a response from our service (for example the need to ‘effect entry’ following an individual experiencing a fall in the home)
• Quickly raise all internal or external safeguarding issues or concerns using the Service’s safeguarding policy and process

On-call stations

Many On-call and Volunteer Firefighters have primary employment or other commitments affecting their availability and so it is recognised that On-call stations cannot deliver the same volume of prevention activity as wholetime stations. On-call stations will:

• Deliver prevention activity if they have received training to do so and when availability allows
• Ensure that any prevention interventions and community engagement activities completed, are delivered to a safe and high-quality standard and are focused on the delivery of this strategy and the Risk and Resource Model
• Communicate opportunities for prevention, community insight, and any relevant learning to the Prevention Team
• Support targeted campaign materials in accordance with the Prevention Calendar for identified risks within their areas
• Raise all prevention and early intervention questions, queries or concerns with the Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team
• Quickly raise all internal or external safeguarding issues or concerns using the Service’s safeguarding policy and process

Protection Team

The Protection Team is responsible for understanding and assessing risk relating to the built environment and then to using its specialist Protection resources to manage risk as efficiently and effectively as possible. The role of this team is also, through their daily work, to identify opportunities for early intervention, prevention and safeguarding activity.
An example of this could be in high-risk residential buildings where there are both built environment and domestic risks.

Capabilities Admin Team

This team provides an integral function, delivering invaluable support to the Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team but also many other teams across the Service.
The work of this team is broad and includes (but is not limited to):

• Processing referrals into the Service, including Home Fire Safety Visits
• Contacting members of the public who have received a Home Fire Safety Visit to support the Service to understand its impact
• Supporting stations to ensure that Home Fire Safety Visits are completed in good time
• Responding to fire safety concerns
• Processing vulnerable person referrals
• Managing the electronic processing of data into our systems (and supporting others to use those systems)

The team also provides budgetary support, significant Post Incident Engagement support, a wide range of administrative support including meeting management, and is fundamental to the processing of DBS checks within Service.

7. Our plan of action

Objective 1: Prevent people from being seriously hurt or killed due to a fire in their home

We will make a positive difference by…

Ensuring our employees are competent and confident to deliver high quality Home Fire Safety Visits:
– By delivering training and assurance activity to ensure that all relevant teams have the competency and confidence to deliver high quality Home Fire Safety Visits / fire prevention / safeguarding activity.

We will improve our ability to identify and efficiently target Home Fire Safety Visits at those most at risk:
– By establishing and maintaining relationships with key partners so that they share information with us to help us target our resources to those most at risk.
– Commissioning activity to collate multiple data sources, to enable us to proactively engage with those most at risk.
– Delivering engagement activity with key community groups who specifically work/volunteer with those we are trying to reach including minoritised groups.
– Creating a data driven accidental home fire campaign toolkit for targeted use across the Service.

Being able to respond efficiently to referrals into our Service for Home Fire Safety Visits:
– By working alongside operational crews to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of those Home Fire Safety Visits that they are unable to deliver due to geography or complexity.
– Providing simple and accessible Home Fire Safety Visit materials which include ‘risk from arson’ and ‘after the fire’ information, for consistent use across the Service.

Continuously improving our fire safety prevention activity and interventions and identify opportunities to prevent harm and provide community reassurance following accidental home fires:
– By seeking out and applying learning from local and national incidents (eg airflow mattresses, lithium batteries, Serious Incident Reviews and Fire Investigations) and our own quality assurance and evaluation activity to improve our work.
– Co-ordinating the implementation of Post Incident Engagement.

Objective 2: Prevent people from being seriously hurt or killed on our roads

We will make a positive difference by…

Ensuring our employees are competent and confident to deliver road safety advice and interventions:
– By providing training to Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team employees, enabling them to provide specialist advice to other teams across the whole Service.

Contributing effectively to the Road Safety Partnership Strategy 2021-2026:
– By managing the Road Safety Partnership funded Road Safety Co-ordinator to deliver identified partnership priorities.
– Actively contributing to the Road Safety Strategic, Tactical and Operational Forums.
– Co-ordinating targeted activity of the Fire Bike engagement vehicles based on partner intelligence, serious collision comparative data and Community Risk Profile geographical data.
– Working with Fire and Rescue Services across the region to align prevention activity and campaigns.
– Supporting targeted delivery of Biker Down interventions.
– Delivering Key Stage 5 pre-driver workshops.
– Delivering an older drivers road safety intervention.
– Reviewing the Team’s contribution to the Speed Management Protocol.
– Creating a data driven road safety campaign toolkit for targeted use across the Service including Road Safety Partnership data analysis.

Generating innovation in prevention and engagement approaches and learn about what works:
By supporting teams across the Service to apply for Road Safety Partnership funds to develop place-based approach.

Objective 3: Prevent people from being seriously hurt or killed in our waters

We will make a positive difference by…

Ensuring our employees are competent and confident to provide specialist advice to other teams across the whole service and use insight to tailor interventions:
– By providing enhanced training in suicide prevention, drowning awareness and water risks to employees.

Improving our ability to identify and efficiently target interventions at those most at risk:
– By securing additional Water Flume equipment and train other teams across the Service in how to use, target and record the intervention.
– Engaging Community Safety Partnership Hubs in relevant prevention activity / interventions.
– Supporting the delivery and evaluation of the Waterside Responder Scheme.
– Targeting our Water Safety Virtual Reality Intervention.
– Working with Fire and Rescue Services and Water Safety Partners across the region to align prevention activity and campaigns.
– Creating a data driven water safety campaign toolkit for targeted use across the Service.

Objective 4: Reduce the impact of large-scale harm to the public from extreme environmental events

We will make a positive difference by…

Improving our ability to identify and efficiently target prevention activity at those most at risk:
– By actively participating in relevant Local Resilience Forum sub-groups
– Creating and implementing ‘Extreme Weather Prevention Packs’ for delivery across
Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team and operational crews when
extreme environmental warnings are triggered.
– Equipping local community and resident groups with appropriate guidance and advice.
– Creating a data driven extreme weather campaign toolkit for targeted use across the
Service.

Enhancing our reach to vulnerable residents in rural communities:
– By offering Extreme Weather Prevention awareness training to appropriate organisations
working with communities in rural areas (eg North Yorkshire Police Rural Task Force).

8. Preventing harm to young people

In addition to 1 Youth Engagement and Schools Manager, who is part of the Early Intervention, Prevention and Safeguarding Team, there is a group of individuals across our Service who through their own goodwill, choose to deliver work in addition to their ‘day job’ to support the delivery of targeted youth education and interventions. With over 450 schools in the City of York and North Yorkshire the Service, the Service must prioritise its resources where they are needed the most.

It is the role of the Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team to lead the following work to make a positive difference.

To ensure our employees are competent, confident and safe to provide interventions for children and young people:
– By ensuring that the Service is delivering or commissioning enhanced training for those working regularly with children and young people.

Within the remit and limitations of the Fire and Rescue Service, to use our organisation’s role models to target interventions at young people and reduce their likelihood of needing or instigating blue light services, supporting them to become resilient young people who can manage adversity.
– By using information and intelligence from relevant partner organisations (eg Community Safety Hubs, North Yorkshire Police and Children’s Safeguarding Teams) to deliver targeted and evaluated LIFE courses.
– Developing delivery of LIFE courses in response to the Serious Violence Duty and the local Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy.
– Supporting delivery of ‘Day in the LIFE’ based activities for targeted audiences.
– Reviewing the funding and contractual options available to increase the capacity within the Service to deliver youth interventions.
– Overseeing Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team’s contribution to Crucial Crew activity in targeted locations.
– Delivering the Juvenile Fire Safe Intervention Programme.

To improve the delivery of consistent, high-quality fire safety, road safety and water safety, education materials across North Yorkshire:
By creating evidence-based, educational, accessible Schools Packs for use by teachers/education providers.
– Providing operational crews with the advice and guidance required to keep children and young people safe.

9. General youth engagement

Youth engagement is important for several reasons. It can build trust and confidence, inspire young people to want to join our service, and can enable individuals and groups to be more open to receiving the Service’s messages, educational advice, and interventions.

Due to the size of the Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team, much of its focus must be on delivering targeted prevention interventions and education which aim to make a specific difference to a particular individual or group of people in accordance with our Community Risk Profile (and supporting others across the Service to do the same). More general and valuable youth engagement is often led by operational crews across the Service.

The role of Youth Engagement Manager who is part of the Early Intervention, Prevention and Safeguarding Team is to lead the following work to make a positive difference.

To ensure our employees are competent, confident and safe to provide engagement with children and young people:
– By contributing to activity required to ensure that the Service is delivering and/or procuring enhanced training for those working regularly with children and young people.

To provide efficient and effective support to Fire Cadet Leaders, enabling them to deliver safe, inclusive and targeted youth engagement through the Cadets Scheme:
By ensuring that Fire Cadets Leaders have received appropriate training and written guidance; that Cadets have appropriate and sufficient Personal Protective Equipment, uniforms and ceremonial items (eg certificates); and that the app ‘Cadet Manager’ is available for use by Cadet Leaders to communicate with parents/carers/guardians.

To enable ‘Fire and Rescue in the Community’ BTEC opportunities to be delivered when and where appropriate:
– By ensuring that workbooks for young people are internally verified efficiently and effectively.

10. Safeguarding

Every person that represents North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, has a legal duty to safeguard children and adults at risk.

The Service itself also has a range of statutory duties in relation to safeguarding, and as an organisation it also has a responsibility to ensure that every individual who represents the Service, is safe to do so.

The Safeguarding Function for the Service is led by a single dedicated role, the Safeguarding Manager and this individual is supported by the Head of Function for Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding and the Area Manager for Response and Resilience.

The Safeguarding Manager has a range of responsibilities which includes working with Local Authority Designated Officers in response to allegations made against, or incidents involving our employees and volunteers which relate to children, young people and/or adults at risk.

On a daily basis the Safeguarding Manager also supports employees and volunteers who have safeguarding concerns, to ensure that appropriate referrals to other organisations are made and followed up.

These are the positive differences we want to make and how we will do it...

To ensure our employees are competent, confident and safe to deliver their safeguarding responsibilities in all situations (including Post Incident Engagement):
– By ensuring that staff working in specialist roles have received appropriate levels of training, and that all staff have access to relevant training materials.

To ensure compliance with national and local standards:
– By maintaining oversight of and co-ordinate all activity required to comply with the Fire Standard for Safeguarding; and our duties towards local authority Safeguarding Boards.

To ensure that all employees and volunteers within our Service have appropriate DBS checks:
– By supporting the People Services function to lead and deliver activity to ensure that all employees and volunteers within our Service have received an appropriate level of DBS check.

To ensure that the Service has robust processes and procedures in place to manage safeguarding related allegations against members of staff and volunteers:
– By supporting activity led by People Services, to ensure that policies and processes can be delivered efficiently and effectively.

To ensure our employees are competent and confident to appropriately identify and respond to safeguarding concerns:
– By ensuring that the Service is delivering and/or procuring enhanced training for those working regularly with children and young people and adults at risk (including Prevent, Child Exploitation, Modern Slavery etc).

To ensure any employee or volunteer who may be experiencing domestic abuse or sexual harm, is supported and safeguarded:
– By creating and implementing the Service’s first domestic abuse and sexual harm policy, operating procedures, process and associated training.

To ensure that minoritised individuals and groups can access our service equitably:
– By completing an accessibility review of our service in accordance with our Equality Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

To ensure that our employees and volunteers feel competent and safe to deal with individuals who approach the Service, who are in crisis (for example fleeing domestic abuse):
– By creating and implementing a person-centred ‘Safe Person’ concept, with an understanding of gender-based abuse and violence.

11. Campaigns

To prevent harm, we must regularly and consistently communicate with the public about risk.

It is the role of the Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Team to utilise specialist communications support, to design and produce consistent and high-quality communication materials for others to use across the Service. To ensure the whole Service works together as one team, these materials are communicated in the form of targeted ‘campaigns’ across the year. Campaign packs are focused on communicating with ‘universal’ groups who require general advice; ‘targeted’ groups (eg young drivers); individuals and others based on specific protected characteristics and/or intersectionality; and those at the most risk of harm (eg those with long term health conditions). As well as delivering consistent campaigns, local crews also have the freedom to deliver a range of other communications message based on their knowledge and understanding of local need.

Campaign Themes
January – February: Fire Safety (Chimneys) / Road Safety
March – April: Home Fire Safety (Theme to be provided by Prevention)
May – September: Wildfire / Water Safety / Motorcycle Safety
October – December: Fire Safety (Charge Safe / Dark Nights)

12. How we will succeed

Our most important resource is our own people (and people in our partner organisations) and this strategy’s success depends on them.

To ensure that those people feel supported, competent, confident, safe and emotionally resilient to deliver prevention, early intervention and safeguarding activity to protect the public from harm, as well as creating this strategy we have developed a comprehensive annual training and wellbeing programme for our people.

As a service, in addition to our staffing costs, our annual financial commitment to Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding is over £100,000. A large proportion of that spend pays for smoke alarms and deaf alarms, which we install in people’s homes.
Every year, we also work hard to secure additional funds from other sources such as the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, to support us to deliver innovative and targeted prevention interventions and activity. An example of this includes funds that enables us to deliver LIFE courses for young people each year.

13. Demonstrating impact

Accompanying this strategy, we have a performance framework which is monitored and measured through a monthly Community Risk and Resilience Performance Group. This helps us to understand and evidence the impact we are having.

We also use:
• What the public tell us about their experiences of our service.
• Our assessments of compliance with national standards for Prevention and Safeguarding.
• An assessment of our delivery of the Fire and Rescue Plan.
• Our internal performance systems and governance structures.
• The comments and assessment of our performance by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Fire and Rescue Services
• Changes to our Community Risk Profile