238 Charity Profile
Casualties Union Supporting rescue, first aid & medical training by Lynn Smith This month’s charity is unusual amongst those organisations I’ve interviewed recently, its mission isn’t to raise funds to enable research into a particular disease or condition, or to assist a particular group in society, or to conserve a specific area of land or species. In fact, Casualties Union doesn’t engage in fundraising as an activity at all and the charity’s remit is to provide a service to a whole stratum of society – those in medical care, first aid and rescue services. A registered charity and independent voluntary organisation, Casualties Union provides acting and reacting casualties, and patients, for the medical profession, emergency services and those teaching first aid, nursing and rescue. The charity’s volunteers spare the time to train and practice casualty simulation, sharing the conviction that rescue, first aid and medical training is improved by having casualties and patients who look and behave as realistically as possible. Using make up members create the illusion of illness or injury, from a faint to a heart attack or from a splinter to a protruding broken bone. Studying how victims would behave, adopting appropriate posture and facial expression and speech they respond to “treatment” by providing vital feedback both during the scenarios or roleplay and in debrief sessions.
have served for many years as General Secretary and one of the Trustees.”
Bringing realism to training for 80 years
No paid workers - fun volunteering opportunities
Hon. General Secretary and Trustee, Caroline Thomas tells me that the charity was founded in 1942, during World War II, by Eric Claxton, who was training the Civil Defence to bring bomb victims out of damaged buildings. To improve the rescuer’s skills, Eric Caxton introduced the idea of casualty simulation, with real people and madeup injuries, which would require greater care to extricate than would dummies. “The success of this idea inspired his colleagues to form an organisation, which carried on into peacetime,” Caroline says, “And this year we are eighty years old.”
Casualties Union has no paid employees. Caroline tells me, “Every member of the organisation is a volunteer, doing the work because it’s worthwhile, rewarding and fun. We currently have about 260 members. It is a lot less than during the 1950s and 1960s, when people were looking for ways to spend their leisure time. Nowadays people are so busy and have many other interests. But it’s the dedicated ones that stay on year after year. “Our volunteers are attached to units around England and Wales, where they attend training sessions in these skills and volunteer for duties, ranging from a first aid course to a big plane crash exercise at an airport.”
Caroline first discovered Casualties Union, at a big first aid competition run by St John Ambulance, which she had joined as a volunteer. “There were these people, apparently badly hurt or collapsed unwell. With an interest in drama and theatrical make-up I decided to join them. Before long I was London Branch Leader, worked up through the grades to Senior Instructor, and
Worthing Branch Leader Norleen Smith with a simulated head injury
Unsurprisingly, the 2020 lockdown hit the organisation hard: “We could no longer meet for training or carry out any duties. It was a bad time for the whole of Casualties Union, not being able to be with our colleagues doing the thing we love so much. Worthing Branch lost two members
