Community first responders and our volunteers
We are exceptionally proud of the commitment and professionalism shown by all our volunteers every year.
Our volunteer workforce is extremely varied, and includes our community first responders, co-responders which are military and other blue light personnel, car drivers within our patient transport services, chaplains and other faith representatives. We are also supported by our community engagement group, and our British Association for Immediate Care (BASIC) doctors and paramedics.
We have more than 1,200 active volunteers who supported our communities and patients last year.
EEAST started to develop dedicated volunteer support for all volunteer roles within EEAST, which included new roles for volunteers and increased our volunteer membership in all roles.
The Trust also sought to innovate and seek out new collaboration initiatives to improve our service and integration with partners across the region.
During the year we continued to maintain the safety of our volunteers while responding to patients and engaging with the public in local communities
Community first responders are volunteers within our local communities who attend a wide variety of calls on behalf of our ambulance service.
Calls range from being the first ambulance service resource at a prehospital cardiac arrest to assisting with a care line call activation.
The below graph shows the number of 999 calls allocated to community first responders for the year 2022/23.
Their commitment to their local community went above and beyond, many volunteers also supported local communities through community awareness sessions, and ongoing social support for the vulnerable within their local communities.
300,000 volunteer hours in our local communities attended over 24,000 patients.
This is how calls are defined nationally:
- C1: immediate response to life threatening condition, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest.
- C2: serious condition, such as stroke or chest pain, which may require rapid assessment and/or transport.
- C3: urgent problem, such as an uncomplicated diabetic issue, which requires treatment and transport to an acute setting.
- C4: non-urgent problem such as stable clinical cases, which requires transportation to a hospital ward or clinic.
- C5: conditions identified as suitable for clinical triage which can be resolved, or sign posted to self care or another agency.
The chart above shows the number of volunteer hours dedicated to responding to calls in 2022/23.
EEAST Heart
EEAST launched EEAST Heart in partnership with the East of England Ambulance Service Charity to deliver training sessions to the local communities in basic life support and automated external defibrillator (AED) awareness. Over 80 volunteers supported this initiative.
StayWise
EEAST was the first ambulance service, nationally, to launch the 'StayWise' education platform.
StayWise is a free learning platform with resources currently aimed at children aged 3 – 11 with later key stages to follow soon. It brings together the educational resources of emergency services and safety charities into one place, making it easy for teachers and parents to access free resources on a range of safety and prevention topics including when to call 999.
This was a national platform funded by the National Fire Chiefs Council and has been accessed over 3500 times, with over 100 EEAST colleague members registered as education advocates.
StayWise was made available to access on all operational crews' iPad/ ePCR devices, meaning education/ prevention advice can be delivered in the pre-hospital setting.
Falls
We continued to support and expand our falls community first responders, enabling them through enhanced training, to attend non injured patients who required assistance in getting up from the floor. Teams were able to discharge the patient from scene with the support of the clinical advice line.
This enabled us to provide a more rapid response to patients who had fallen, and made a difference to many patients experience and care over the course of the year.
We undertook ongoing refresher training during the year to maintain volunteer skills and competence.
Charitable funding
Through charity funding we mobilised CFR cars around the Trust, these cars enabled volunteers to travel further distances to life threatening emergencies and also patients who have fallen, providing volunteer care to more communities, irrespective of socio-economic demographics.
The volunteers are always very appreciative of the charitable donations we receive as an organisation from patients and members of the public to support the provision of community response and education.
Training
EEAST continued to increase the skills and qualifications offered to volunteers. Our trainers had the opportunity to undertake the award in education and training (AET) and the certificate in assessing vocational achievement (CAVA), to assist them with a recognised training and assessment qualification, along with offering invigilator training for them to assist with the assessments for the induction course.
These not only provide our volunteers with valuable transferable skills, they also support the capacity within the training team to deliver training and provide a standard for local training.
Volunteer car drivers
Volunteer car drivers support the non-emergency patient transport services (NEPTS) operated within our PTS contracts. Their role is to support EEAST by taking patients to and from routine hospital appointments. In the coming year there are plans to increase recruitment for this opportunity and develop further volunteering roles within the NEPTS teams.
The Trust is currently reviewing the volunteer role under the wellbeing umbrella and looking at how we can develop roles that will support a diverse organisation. How we can support both integration through our staff networks, and developing volunteer roles that can support colleague wellbeing.