CFA is committed to the wellbeing of all its firefighters. We have a duty to ensure the safety of our people; if someone volunteers their time as a firefighter, we want to make sure they come home.
Firefighting is inherently dangerous and at times our members are placed under extreme conditions to render assistance to the community. To make sure that they come home in good shape after getting on a truck, we need to ensure they are medically fit to perform their duties.
We have trialled a Fit for Duty program to ensure that our volunteers are safe when they turn out to help keep people and properties safe.
Developed by volunteers for volunteers, in collaboration with Deakin University, to address the physical and mental demands of firefighting, Fit for Duty is a three-pronged program with a health-screening component, physical tanker-based activities, and a Mental Health First Aid Course.
The medical component will be done through volunteers’ own GP to maintain confidentiality. GPs will be provided with advice around the demands of different firefighting roles and asked to provide medical clearance.
If they have to do restricted duties for a while, we will work that through with them. We want to work with them to get back on a truck if that’s what they want.
During the pilot, a number of people have actually been alerted to underlying health issues that they’ve been able to address, which potentially could have saved their lives.
The psychological component of Fit for Duty is about mental health first aid, not psychological testing.
It’s important to help brigade members understand the sign of stress or mental health issues to prevent harm or further harm and to encourage people to understand where they are on the mental health spectrum and what support is available.
The physical component is being adjusted in consultation with our members following valuable feedback and learnings during the trial stage.
Feedback has been positive from the 430 operational volunteers from our most active brigades in Victoria’s South West that have completed pilot testing.
For most of the participants, no medical issue was identified. For the ones that had medical issues identified through Fit for Duty, we supported them in addressing those.
Two have since returned to operational duties, while a third has continues to provide a valuable service as a non-operational CFA volunteer.
CFA’s Chief Officer is considering a state-wide implementation from 1 July 2019, pending funding, but the roll-out is expected to take a couple of years. Our Fit for Duty team is now working with brigades to establish how the program can be implemented.
Fit for Duty is a program for volunteers. Career firefighters go through rigorous medical and physical testing as part of the recruitment process and also have a requirement to maintain an operational capacity. They have a restricted duties process or return to work process that is managed locally, but overseen centrally. To do so, many of them take up the opportunity to access to our program called Healthy For Life, which is delivered by the CFA Health Services team to Career Firefighters, Administrative staff, District Mechanical Officers and Communications staff state wide since 2006 to improve employee’s wellbeing, health, and fitness.
