The charity Our Blue Light is working hard to shine a spotlight on the Blue Light Programme. This is an initiative sponsored by the Cabinet Office and delivered by the mental health charity Mind on behalf of members of the emergency services in England and Wales.
The Blue Light Programme aims to provide mental health support to those emergency staff and volunteers from police, ambulance, fire and search & rescue (SAR) services across England and Wales.
Developed in consultation with individuals from across the services, we have created a range of resources tailored to each service, designed to support the mental health of volunteers, staff, employers and groups.
Mind is asking individual units such as fire or ambulance stations and Mountain Rescue Teams to sign up as a way of fighting stigma and make positive changes to improve mental health in the workplace. Signatories will:
If you become a Blue Light Champion you will raise awareness of mental health in your team and help to change the way we all think and act when it comes to mental health in the emergency services. How you do this is completely up to you, and we encourage you to get creative!
Being a Champion in your search and rescue team doesn’t have to take up a lot of time – you can give as much time as you have. Every activity, no matter how big or small, contributes to the central goal of challenging mental health stigma and making it ok to talk.
Take a look at our questionnaire to help you decide if you could be a Blue Light Champion or Register as a Blue Light Champion
Applications can be made to join the team in a support role (Operational Support) or as a hill going (Search and Rescue) member.
Applications for either role can be made at any time. Intakes for Operational Support members occur at various times of the year. There is one annual intake for Search and Rescue normally each September.
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Our weekly training session last night saw us taking place in a multi-agency search & rescue scenario at South Gare, Redcar, working alongside our colleagues from Redcar Coastguard Rescue Team and British Red Cross.
The search was for six missing people who had been attending a rave in the area but were now unaccounted for and possibly in need of help. Working in mixed search parties of Coastguard and MRT personnel the missing people were eventually all located, scattered around the area, before being treated for a range of injuries and conditions.
Once safely back at the joint control point, based at our Incident Control vehicle, the casualties were well looked after by members from the British Red Cross. And many thanks to them for the very welcome hot drinks as the exercise came to a close, before a debrief and home!
Lots of good experience and an exchange of ideas on the night. Great to be out and about with our partner organisations doing something a bit different, in an area that was an new search venue for many of us.
Many thanks also to our ‘casualties’ for playing their parts!
It's so so good to see my old colleagues at CMRT continuing to build relations with HMRC (and other Emergency Service Partners). Long may this continue 👍😀
To everyone who has been involved 👍🌟🌟🌟🌟
There you go Olivia Pursley
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