^{Date Published: 15 Dec 2009 3:07pm}

Available from Tuesday 15 December on the Knowledge Web.

The AFAC Community Education Group, project leader Julie Harris, MFB, developed and led a national project to embed basic home fire safety information into the training for community care workers.

The reviewed training packages were signed off by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Ms Julia Gillard in December 2008. Basic home fire safety information is now part of 9 separate units of competency which are included in 49 separate qualifications.

The scope for this project was agreed at the commencement of the project and resulted from engagement with both community and fire services.

This learning resource provides information about basic home fire safety for community sector workers who deliver services in a community setting.

This learning resource can be used to support:

• training for existing community sector workers
• training for people wishing to enter the community sector
• induction training for new community sector workers
• refresher training and skills maintenance for existing community sector workers.

Community sector workers may:

• work in range of community service sectors such as aged care, child care, community work, home and community care, community-based accommodation for people with a disability, social housing, mental health, alcohol and other drugs, children’s and youth services and others
• have a range of different titles/perform a range of different roles such as case managers, care coordinators, care workers, managers, professionals, support workers, team leaders and others across a range of different disciplines.

As a community sector worker, knowledge of basic home fire safety will provide you with strategies to:

• promote basic home fire safety with clients
• inform clients about the risk of fires in their homes
• influence and promote safe evacuation if there is a fire in a client’s home
• influence any misunderstanding or underestimated perception of risk that clients may have about fire in their homes
• assist clients to comply with relevant state/territory smoke alarm legislation
• reduce the risk of fire in your workplace if you work in a client’s home
• reduce the risk of fire related injuries and fatalities.

Basic home fire safety includes knowledge of:

• high fire risk groups
• behaviour that may contribute to fire injury and/or fatality
• role of a working smoke alarm
• types of smoke alarms
• optimum placement of smoke alarms
• smoke alarm testing and cleaning
• Referring client for smoke alarm installation and maintenance.

Anyone downloading this package will be asked to complete an online form to enable tracking of who is using this package and where it is being used.