Fire does discriminate

Welcome to the second edition of our newsletter sharing with partners the work NYFRS are doing to keep our communities safe from the devastating effects of fire. If you missed the first edition it can be found on our website alongside other resources for partners
Home Fire Safety Visit Partnerships – North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service (northyorksfire.gov.uk)

The Fire Service alone cannot keep communities safe. We need partners to refer vulnerable people to us so that we can provide fire prevention advice in the form of our free Safe and Well visits. People can be vulnerable to fire for all sorts of reasons but statistics show that age and mobility are significant factors.

In this edition we will be providing an update on the referrals we have received from you since the Partnership seminar in the autumn, introducing some new members of the Prevention team, explaining how we have tailored our prevention advice to the cost of living, exploring the prevention themes we will be focusing on this coming quarter and showing how the partnership between NYFRS and York based charity MySight has evolved.

Some of you may be working with clients who use air flow mattresses and there is a feature about the risks these can pose and how they can be mitigated.

Remember you can refer to us for a Safe and Well visit for person centred advice or contact us if you have any questions.e-at-home/home-firesafety-partnerships/

Referrals received

One aim of the partnership seminar in September was to increase the number
of agency referrals to the fire service. It was a success! We saw an initial increase in the number of referrals submitted by agencies, this is brilliant news because only by working together can we identify “those people most at risk of a fire.

NYFRS have completed over 1200 Safe and Well visits since October 2022 and 44% of
these have been referrals from agencies. Baywater, Living Well, the NHS and NYCC
Health and Social Care have provided the largest number of referrals, but each and every
one received is important. Thank you all for suggesting to your clients that they could
benefit from home fire safety advice. 12% of all Safe and Wells have been classed as
being at very high risk of fire and 18% at high risk. They will all have been given safety
advice to reduce the risk of fire.

However, we are not complacent and there has been a downturn in referrals during
December. We are keen to keep up the momentum and work with you to sustain the
number of Safe and Well referrals. Please contact us if there is a further training need or
if there are opportunities to educate your staff, volunteers or clients about Safe and Well visits

See our article about MySight to see how this has worked in practice.

Prevention Updates

New members to the team

We are happy to announce we have two new members in our Prevention Team, Keir Bascombe and Amy Jenkinson-Worthy both started with us in November and after a period of training they are both getting into the swing of things now. Keir is working in the Harrogate area and Amy is working in the York area. If you see either of
them please don’t be afraid to say hello

Feedback from the prevention seminar

Thank you to those who took the time to provide feedback about our online prevention
seminar. If you missed it or have new starters who would benefit from watching it, it is
available on our website. It covers a variety of home fire safety topics and explains the
referral process into the fire service.

It was really informative

I have lots of useful information to cascade

Great to hear the ways to reduce these risks

Made me think about how our team have missed referrals to
NYFRS

Not something I had even considered previously, but very
relevant to our clients

Safe and well referral partners

Thirteen organisations have already signed up to become safe and well referral partners.

This has various benefits including access to our information sharing protocol, training and their service being added to our referrals app which is used by the fire service and police officers. It’s not too late for your organisation to sign up, just visit our website to find out more

https://www.northyorksfire.gov.uk/your-safety/safe-at-home/home-fire-safetypartnerships
You can email us at Prevention@northyorsfire.gov.uk

Be Safe, Feel Safe this Winter & the Cost of Living

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service have launched an online resource offering
guidance to prevent fire related incidents this winter – especially for when heating
your home.

With fuel prices rising, many people may turn to alternative ways to heat their home, cook their food or manage other electrical appliances, and so this guidance provides advice on how best to avoid risks and stay safe. This includes:
* Heating your home using devices such as portable heaters, solid fuel heating, outdoor
heating and electric blankets.
* Cooking – specifically using disposable or portable equipment.
* Safe use of electrical appliances such as washing machines, tumble dryers and
dishwashers.
* Appropriately using candles.
* Fire detection and smoke alarms in your owned homes or rented accommodation.
* Signposting to support services that can help with managing energy bills, staying warm this winter and identifying fire risks in the home

Working in Partnership with MySight

Since our last newsletter we have been working with MySight York, a charity who
support people to live well with sight loss. We have gained a better understanding of
the services and equipment they provide to people across North Yorkshire which
we can share with people who are referred to us for Safe and Well visits.
We have identified practical ways of working together to keep people safe and since that first meeting we have provided MySight York with a digital leaflet “Fire Safety for People with Sight, Hearing or Mobility Issues” which can be given to people visiting their offices or emailed/posted to people.

We have also had an article published in their newsletter “YorView” which gave advice
about how to keep safe and well this winter, and we have been interviewed by their telephone group and received some positive feedback.

“Thank you very much for sharing with the group much useful information in a very logical way.  Members had ample time to clarify things with you; their engagement was encouraging and their various ideas and experiences well worth offering as well”. Barbara Fairs, Deputy Chief Executive said “We are delighted to be working in
partnership with NYFR and have the benefit of their expertise to help keep our vulnerable
clients safe at home”. We are continuing to work together by referring people to each other’s services and we hope to use their window display to promote some of our safety messages this spring so if you are in York please look out for them!

Thank you to MySight York for signing up to become a safe and well referral partner, to find out more about their work visit their website www.mysightyork.org

Safelincs Referral Tool

NYFRS are now using the national online referral tool Safelincs (HFSC (safelincs.co.uk)).

By asking a series of questions Safelincs calculates an overall score of the fire risk from
very high through to low fire risk. Using this information we are able to match our
resources to those who are in greatest need of a Safe and Well visit, and to simply provide a written self assessment to individuals who are at low risk of a fire.

The online tool is able to be used by an individual or an agency, should take less than 10 minutes to complete, show images to accurately describe the level of clutter, provides a case reference number to agencies with an information sharing agreement wishing to make follow up enquiries, will automatically send cross border referrals across to the relevant Fire Service area and can be translated into different languages at the click of a button. These improvements in the referral process are helping us to provide the best possible service to those most vulnerable in our communities.

Prevention Campaign
Calendar

To ensure the safety messages we are providing are relevant and have the most
impact we follow a fire prevention campaign calendar which reflects
different seasonal activities.

We are currently focussing on Electrical Fire Safety promoting messages about registering
appliances, safe charging and not overloading sockets.

Fires relating to heating equipment continue to impact our communities so our key
messages in February are to get your chimney swept regularly, have a carbon monoxide alarm fitted and burn appropriate fuels.

In March the focus turns to road safety; we attend more collisions on the roads than we do fire or water incidents. Investigations show that there are five main contributory factors that cause serious road traffic collisions. These are known as the Fatal
Five and they are careless driving, speeding, drink or drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt and distracted driving.

We shall be sharing information about all of these campaigns on our social media accounts, please share them to your own pages.

Register my appliance week

This January we are supporting Register My Appliance Week, a national campaign started by the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances.

Register my appliance week starts on the 23rd of January and aims to encourage people to register their white goods appliances with the manufacturer. In a very small number of cases, manufacturers may identify problems with an appliance once the
product has been in use for some time. They then need to contact the customer to get the fault corrected as quickly as possible. Normally a quick in-home fix by a qualified technician will banish any risk. It can be very difficult to trace customers as
they often do not provide contact details when they buy a product. Registering can also save people money by entitling them to an extended warranty
or guarantee period.

Our data suggests that washing machines and tumble dryers are frequent causes of domestic fires, our aim is to promote this service in the hope we can get faulty appliances to be replaced or repaired before more incidents occur. People can register any appliance at https://www.registermyappliance.org.uk

Airflow mattresses

We are currently doing a piece of work highlighting some of the fire risks posed
by Dynamic Airflow Mattresses, although these are not inherently dangerous when
combined with ignition sources, they can accelerate a fire.

This equipment is specifically used for the prevention and/or treatment of pressure sores
caused by being bed bound or extended periods of immobility. The equipment can include
pillows and mattresses which are filled with air by a pump. Pressure is adjusted though the pump according to the needs of the individual.

Dynamic Air Mattresses are filled with air by an electrical pump. If the mattress becomes
punctured, the pump works harder to keep the mattress inflated. Where the puncture is caused by an ignition source, the escaping air acts as bellows and can cause the fire to increase in intensity and to spread quickly.

If you know or work with someone who has a Dynamic Airflow Mattress please recommend our Safe & Well visits to them so we can check for fire risks and put in place
control measures to keep them safe. For more information please visit –
https://www.northyorksfire.gov.uk/yoursafety/safe-at-home/dynamic-airflowmattress

Coming next time

The third edition of our newsletter “Partnering in Fire Prevention” will be published in April.
It will include information about what we are doing to support our themed prevention weeks such as deaf awareness week (1st May), Mental Health Awareness Week (8th May) and Dementia Action Week (16th May).

If you are planning any activities of your own for these weeks of action and would like to partner with us please get in touch.

Please also contact us with suggestions about what you would like to see included or let us know if you would like to be added to the distribution.

Contact us

Prevention@northyorksfire.gov.uk or call 01609 780150