In May 2024, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) adopted StayWise as our preferred source of fire, road and water safety prevention education for delivery to children and young people in schools and the community.
We are proud to share that within three months of launching we achieved 369 StayWise registrations across Blue Light users, Teachers and Volunteers. GMFRS staff are using StayWise resources to deliver at all of our school visits, and we are working towards using StayWise more widely as we embed it into our wider approach.
We began our StayWise journey by bringing together a group of our colleagues to form a task and finish group. The group enabled us to scope out an action plan, timescales, and what we would put in place to successfully adopt StayWise as our preferred resource library for all our educational resources.
As part of the work, we consulted our delivery staff including operational crews who deliver in schools, and also teachers, to get their thoughts on StayWise and to seek feedback on any training requirements.
We developed a guidance document for our staff to support them to use StayWise, particularly at school visits. To get staff on board, and ready to deliver, we launched a phased internal communications plan, including updates to our website and intranet pages, as well as articles in our internal and external newsletters.
We also delivered a series of staff training sessions on Teams to over 900 staff. The one-hour sessions consisted of an introduction to StayWise and its benefits, how to register, login to and navigate StayWise and its resources.
All of this enabled a successful launch on May 13th 2024, from which point on GMFRS staff have been using StayWise resources, including a GMFRS bundle of lessons and lesson plans, to deliver on all our schools visits. Where possible, staff are encouraged to use StayWise for wider delivery of safety education in the community, across Greater Manchester.
We are now working to promote StayWise to our partner organisations and educators in several ways; on our website, in our newsletter, at strategic meetings and by providing leaflets, stickers and pens at school visits, and community events. In addition, staff working at our Safety Centre (which hosts school and community visits) created a certificate of attendance for children and young people to take home. On the back of the certificate, is a QR code embedded with a direct link to the StayWise website to enable them and their parents to further explore the ever-evolving library of resources.
Finally, our SPOCs met with StayWise leads to learn how we can continue to monitor and improve. A survey will be sent out to GMFRS delivery staff to enable us to capture feedback and address any issues and implement improvements to ensure GMFRS continue to effectively deliver fire, road and water safety prevention education materials to children and young people in schools and the community across Greater Manchester.
Area Manager Billy Fenwick, Head of Prevention at Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, said;
“Our adoption of StayWise has been a great success so far. Following the implementation of StayWise this summer, the Service now utilises the platform as our chosen tool for educational delivery to children and young people. We look forward to working more with our partners, including blue light services, schools and other educational establishments, to extend the use of StayWise across our city region.”