About the Fire Services Community

The fire service plays a prominent role in the field of youth firesetting intervention. In the case of child-set fires, the first contact many will have is with the fire service. This may occur due to the circumstances of the fire department response or because of the positive image most fire agencies enjoy in the community.

Most consider the fire service to be a community helper. This provides an opportunity for the fire service to establish a rapport with children and families like no other discipline. With this comes a responsibility to embrace the skills necessary to engage families with intervention.

With the challenges facing today's fire services, it may not be possible to provide a full range of services, which would include youth firesetting intervention. However, community networking and participation in multi-disciplinary coalitions is always an option. The fire service, in their dedication to community safety, is well positioned to remain involved, even when it is impossible to take a leadership role.

Youth firesetting was long thought to be a fire service problem. It is now known to be a community problem that requires community involvement to address. The fire service is uniquely positioned to discover the behavior and intervene when children set fires.

• Emergency response crews arrive at fire scenes when children have set fires. They can gather information, establish rapport with families, provide information and perspective on the behavior, and make appropriate referrals to a program or intake process.
• Fire prevention (educators, fire marshal's) personnel may spearhead programs to provide intervention services to children and families. They often have access to schools, businesses, and other community venues and events where citizens gather. While intervention is a secondary prevention strategy, an understanding of youth firesetting behaviors and programs can enhance primary prevention programs in the community.
• Fire investigation will typically identify youth-set fires. When this occurs, intervention, prosecution, and/or referral become options. The fire investigator can strongly influence the direction of the intervention and set the tone for families and how involved they may be.
• Community volunteers involved in a wide range of fire service activities and programs can serve as members of an intervention coalition. Many fire agencies make excellent use of skilled volunteers to oversee and deliver youth firesetting intervention.
• Administrative staff within fire agencies should be skilled at triaging phone calls with service questions for fire department services. Adding youth firesetting to the menu is easy and plays to a logical community contact point.

Issues Facing the Fire Services Community

• The fire service is response oriented. Prevention and intervention programs are often a low priority. Staffing assignments may not be based on skill and interest. At times, it might be predicated on physical limitations (to emergency response capabilities) or as a necessity for future promotions or desirable assignments.
• The fire service may not embrace community involvement. While it is certainly important to work with the community, assignment as a liaison to community groups and coalitions takes time which may not be allocated.
• The fire service may not embrace programs. It is common for fire departments to continually "re-start" youth firesetting intervention programs. This usually happens because the spark plug who championed the program retired, promoted, transferred, or otherwise moved on and a replacement was not assigned until the problem again became acute. A program that is truly embraced by a fire agency will be perpetuated when a vacancy occurs, much like all other priority assignments in a fire department.
• The fire service does not understand the nature of youth firesetting. The fact is, many communities cannot say that they have or do not have a youth firesetting issue to address. Data collection is lax in many communities. As many as 2/3 of fire departments may not be reporting information to the national system, and probably not locally when that is the case.

Goals for the Fire Service Community

• Understand the character of the youth firesetting problem in your community. Every fire agency should strive to understand the risk in their community based on the reality of their response services.
• Serve as a resource to the community for all issues related to fire. This does not necessarily suggest that a program must be housed within a fire agency, rather, being part of a coalition in any capacity and serving as a community resource to that coalition or program is critical.
• Provide staffing commensurate to the problems and service needs to the community. The fire service should strive to meet the community need by reducing the emergencies that call fire agencies to service. This can only be done by dedicating prevention efforts (and necessary staffing) to those areas of need.
• Provide long-term dedication to prevention programming. Prevention programs can show change immediately but most often it is a gradual change that must be measured over a period of years. The only way to recognize this type of community impact is through long-term dedication to the program.
• Recognize prevention as a necessary discipline in the fire service. Emergency response services will always be needed. However, a great deal of time and resources can be saved through the prevention of emergencies.