News

Tim Atherton of Fastaid, Community First Responders, Solihull was recently awarded First Responder of the year at 2008 Ambulance Service Institute Awards. The Ambulance Service Institute makes the awards to mark the outstanding actions of ambulance staff across the country. An awards ceremony was hosted by Jacquai Lait MP in the Commons on Thursday 16th October. Tim Atherton was introduced to the world of Community First Responders (CFR) by his parents who both respond. He is now an active member of the FASTAID ... Read more

 Well done to Emma Wilkins whose role as Community Response Manager for Birmingham and the Black Country is now substantive.  Emma was seconded to the post in March and has successfully implemented defibrillators in a number of local communities, helped train hundreds of members of the public in basic life support and encouraged more people to become CFR’s.   Emma said “I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenges of the role. I am looking forward to increasing awareness of basic life support and first ... Read more

The West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust have been chosen to trial a new role that will be funded by the British Heart Foundation for two years, the position will be known as a Community Resuscitation Development Officer with a view to expanding the role to other trusts. Andy Whittington, a paramedic based at Solihull, has been selected to represent the foundation, and given the task to drive the development of a co-ordinated community response to achieve improved outcome ... Read more

Guest Motors have agreed to provide Fastaid with the use of a new Alfa 147. The car will be signed with the Fastaid logo and used for both emergencies calls and local events. Dave Monk chair of Fastaid says the use of a car will benefit both Fastaid and the people in our community. The car will be used to attend emergency call and for local events etc. This will help raise the profile of Fastaid and what we do. We ... Read more

The FastAid CFR’s have recently had a training day at Meridan Community Centre to further enhance their knowledge to enable them to assist crews even more. Emma Wilkins (Community Responder Manager) and Andy Whittington (Paramedic) provide awareness on the use of spinal boards, removal of motorcycle helmets, nasopharangyl airways, the use of Nebulisers and heart monitors. The aim of this awareness training session was to provide the CFR’s with more knowledge to enable them to assist crews more with greater knowledge of ... Read more

A dedicated group of Community First Responders, complete with stretcher and manikin, helped to raise awareness at a Knowle Fun Run at the weekend. The FastAid runners, who are CFRs for the Solihull and Black Country area, successfully completed the 5 mile run whilst pushing a stretcher, automated external defibrillator and manikin! Emma Wilkins, Community Responder Manager, was one of the runners and said: “Even though it was almost 30 degrees, we completed the run in just under 55 minutes. On ... Read more

A group of gardeners aged from six to 94 have raised more than £2,000 for the County Air Ambulance charity and for FastAid. The Thornbridge Avenue Allotments group have raised £2,260 so far after nominating the two charities as their causes for this year. FastAid have already received a cheque donation of£1,100 from the group, for which members are very grateful.

This weekend saw the culmination of the latest IHCD First Person on Scene (FPOS) Intermediate training course. Nineteen of Fastaid’s CFRs completed the course over two weekends updating their clinical skills including trauma, paediatrics, assisting the paramedic as well as basic life support and defibrillation refreshers and recertification. The training was kindly run by West Midlands Ambulance Service

A charity which provides life-saving care has been given a cash boost by Solihull Rotarians. Fastaid Community First Responders have been presented with £1,250 from the Solihull Rotary Club, as well as raising £751 from a collection outside Sainsbury’s in Solihull, on December 1. The charity provides volunteers across Birmingham and the Black County, who are then trained by the ambulance service to respond to heart attack incidents has received several general donations. (Solihull Times)

The healthcare commission has just completed a national review of the role of Community First Responders across the country. Some of the key findings of the report: The number of emergency calls that CFRs attend is relatively low in comparison to the number of calls attended by ambulance staff. In 2006/2007 the 12 ambulance services that took part in the survey received and responded to five million 999 calls. Of these, CFRs were sent to 92,928 which is 1.8% of the total ... Read more