Government & Politics
“How do you talk to people if they don’t exist?”
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This is the eerie title of a free one-day seminar being run by CFOA in partnership with Newcastle University as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. FIRE previews the seminar, to be held at the London Fire Brigade HQ on November 9, which focuses on how information sharing techniques can improve fire safety outcomes
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So What Is Information Sharing? “Information sharing is crucial to the success of public service transformation, but capacity or cultural issues can often obstruct lasting change,” asserts the Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing. Their work “focuses on challenging these barriers to ensure improved outcomes for public service workers”. Nicola Underdown is an engagement manager at the centre. She will be speaking at the event and sharing the experience she and her colleagues have of working in different sectors, where they provide advice and handson support with information sharing problems. The event is timely as fire and rescue services will receive Exeter Data during October. This data
set contains the date of birth, gender and address of all over 65s who are registered with GPs. The receipt of this data is a huge step forward in the Fire and Rescue Service’s knowledge about one of its highest at risk groups. However, the volume of the data is likely to be large; for example, a fire and rescue service serving a one million population may end up with records for around 170,000 over 65s. Andy Mobbs from London Fire Brigade and Philip Usher from Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service will be looking at how to make sense of large datasets among the rest of the data that fire and rescue services have to hand. They will be launching a new data concept called DemograFIRE at the seminar. Another aspect of information sharing is based on networks. Thinking of informal networks between people, those that connect us to family, work, public services and so on. Dr Dermot Breslin, from the Management School at the University of Sheffield, has been working on the concept of behavioural connectivity. It is not a new field of work, but its application to addressing fire risk for vulnerable people is innovative: it is information sharing at its most simple level but has the potential to be very powerful. Dr Breslin has been working with South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and will be sharing the outcomes of this partnership at the seminar. Behavioural connectivity can reveal those in communities who have few links to those around them who can help, including ways to find themselves on the radar of their local fire and rescue service. The Campaign to end Loneliness seeks to inspire organisations, like fire and rescue services, to do more to tackle the health threat of loneliness in old age. The seminar will hear from the Campaign, learning about emotional and social loneliness, about transient and chronic feelings of loneliness and the link with social isolation. The focus of this session will be on how better information sharing can help link fire and rescue services with those who are lonely and potentially at risk of fire. This promises to be a fascinating day and is just one of over 200 free events happening nationwide from November 7-14 as part of the 13th annual Festival of Social Science.
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ver the past ten years, fire and rescue services have become really good at working with partners to target their community safety work and drive down the numbers of fires, injuries and fatalities. However, there are a small, undefinable number of people who just never show up on the radar. Falling through the cracks can lead to tragic results and many fatal fire case reviews bear this out. That is why this free seminar is a useful reminder of how better information sharing approaches can help fire and rescue services innovate in how to work with partners, old and new, to pinpoint the hard to reach. In an exciting new partnership, CFOA has teamed up with the Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise (KITE) at Newcastle University to run this event. Professor Rob Wilson is the Director of KITE and oversees a three-year programme, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that is looking at the “challenges posed by the use of information in governing and delivering public services”. After discussions with CFOA’s lead for Data Integration and Research, DCFO Neil Odin from Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, it soon became clear to Professor Wilson that the Fire and Rescue Service was a sector that could benefit from the work of his research centre. This seminar provides an opportunity to explore some approaches from academia and see how they might work in the world of fire.
Run by the ESRC, the Festival of Social Science provides an opportunity for anyone to meet with some of the country’s leading social scientists and discover, discuss and debate the role that research plays in everyday life. For details about how to register to attend this free event, visit: www.cfoa.org. uk/20194.
October 2015 | www.fire–magazine.com | 17