Youth firesetting behaviors are learned. This learning comes from many sources but begins in the home. From that point, many elements of the community have an opportunity to intervene, and long before firesetting requires the response of the fire services. Consider the following:

Parents

Help your children understand that fire is to be respected and is literally a tool for grown ups, not something for children. Children are often empowered to use fire long before they are capable of understanding its dangers. In fact, candles (on birthday cakes and other places) present one of the earliest opportunities for children to master the use of fire. Carefully consider these situations and be sure that children understand the safety considerations that are going on with each use of fire. Be sure and tell kids what you expect them to do, do not just criticize them after a mistake. These open communications will go a long way to defeating firesetting before it ever begins.

Fire Services

Becoming involved in youth firesetting intervention can be very easy if a program is already operating in your department or area. Efforts will likely be welcomed and if the program is sound, it will have the structure to help you find a place where your skills can be best used.

Involvement in the youth firesetting intervention movement takes nothing more than a desire to help. The outcomes for not joining in are painfully obvious when a child-set fire results in a damaged home, a burn injury, or a death. In fact, those at greatest risk for death in a child-set fire are preschool-age children. These young children are least able to advocate for themselves or protect themselves. This should certainly be motivation to look behind the door.

If a program does not already exist in your community, the road may be more challenging. Vision, salesmanship, and teamwork become the necessary tools. Teamwork needs high emphasis since youth firesetting behaviors are a community problem, not owned only by the fire service.

The best starting point may be outside the fire service. A knock on the door of the mental health, child welfare, medical, law enforcement, or juvenile justice community may find willing partners. Even non-profit, child-safety advocate groups have championed youth firesetting intervention in the community.

The fire service is ripe with opportunity to perform service to society. The traditional response services are one of the purest forms of community involvement. When someone is in need, the fire service responds. Sometimes the real need is less spectacular or dramatic than we might expect. Sometimes it's behind a door that barely gets our attention. But the need is most certainly there. Consider this an invitation to serve.

If viable options cannot be found in your community, contact larger advocacy organizations like MatchBook Journal or SOS FIRES: Youth Intervention Programs. Their existence intends to support the very efforts necessary to create and sustain intervention efforts for kids with fire.

Mental Health

• Read the relevant literature that has been published over the past 25 years. Go to a local university library to gain access to research publications, books, and other articles on the subject.
• Search the national websites (sosfires.com and theideabank.com) to locate firesetting intervention programs in your area or state. Call to offer your services and to explore training opportunities that might be available to you.
• Contact one of the members of our mental health contributor board at MatchBook for more specific questions. Continue to visit MatchBook's mental health page for regular updates.
• Seek trainings on those issues that are associated often with juvenile firesetting (aggression, trauma, ADHD, etc).

Juvenile Justice

Early intervention has become an important concept and can apply to youth firesetting as well. It isn't necessary to wait for children to commit crimes to provide diversion or punishment. The fire service is positioned to discover behaviors before they evolve to delinquency and/or crime. Partnerships can lead to reduced workloads for all, and ultimately a safer situation for the community and the families needing service.

Pediatric Burn Care

You have enjoyed a natural connection with the fire service due to the inherent risk incurred by firefighters. This relationship can go further. Many successful youth firesetting programs are housed in burn units, and many burn units supplement intervention programs in a number of ways. When considering community safety, and especially that of young children, no opportunity for partnership should be overlooked.

• Request training from those hospitals that do have JFS Programs.
• Burn centers can be involved in training mental health providers to specifically work with JFS.
• Burn centers can offer to host a meeting for fire departments or judicial systems even if they don't already have a JFS program.

Schools

Help children understand the dangers of fire. Yes, it should be covered in the home (you're not using fire in school, so why should it be addressed...) but in case parents do not, someone must. While firefighters may visit your school, they typically spend all their time on skills need to respond to a fire after it starts (stop, drop, roll; crawl low under smoke; have a safe meeting place; etc.). It is much harder and takes much more skill to discuss an important concept such as "matches and lighters are tools for adults, not toys for children." Addressing this single topic might make an incredible difference in a child's life.