Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by EYFD5917 on April 4, 2009 at 1:59pm

Wow! Awesome idea for retaining members,and getting those meeting/training attendance numbers higher! I Will certainly put the 'ol "thinking helmet" on for this one,and look forward to future ideas from all the folks.

Permalink Reply by Swen Swenson on June 3, 2009 at 10:11am

What we have done in the past is get members that have kids to get together and work something out that on a rotation or one of the support members that does not respond to fires to watch the other firefighters kids this was done either at the station or at one of there homes. What helps is that it brings everyone in as family so they all feel part of the department. Yes there is a delay in getting everyone on scene but it does work

Permalink Reply by Pam Tichy on June 24, 2010 at 9:42am

We talked about this many many years ago when I was in EMS - we had people who wanted to support us, but couldn't do blood we never got anything off the ground though - but GREAT concept!
For me, being from a family of volunteer firefighters kids are a challenge. Since my mom, althoguh still active, has aged we have worked out a plan where nightime calls,, on school nights, she comes to my house to be with my son and then I am available to respond to the call with the auxiliary (of which we are both members). During the summer, or on weekends - yep I do, I yank him out of bed and he goes along with me - been doing this since he was an infant. He actually enjoys it and once when we were traveling around to deliver water to the fire police and pond guys, he made the comment to me 'y'know mom this is really important, what we do isn't it - we are helping our firemen'. That right there told me yanking him out of bed at 2am was not being a bad mom - quite the opposite it is a lesson worth teaching! He gets it!