Welfare provision

Conference notes the heroic actions of both firefighting and control Members at recent traumatic incidents including the tragic Grenfell Tower fire. These traumatic incidents can have a detrimental impact on our Members’ welfare and mental health.

Conference also notes the FBU education provided in the form of the excellent Mental Health Awareness course given to Union Officials.

The welfare response from UK Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs), following these traumatic incidents can be varied, often reactive, and given by untrained members of staff, if there is any response at all.

Therefore Conference instructs the Executive Council to:

• survey all UK FRSs to understand the response to mentally traumatic incidents, discover how timely that response is

• ask what training is given to those responders

• survey all UK FRSs to understand what training and education is given to individuals to recognise stress and develop coping mechanisms

• ask what level of training those educators have

• seek to produce a NJC Mental Health best practice guidance with a view to encouraging all UK FRSs to adopt this best practice.