We are a team of Community First Responders who live in and around Ettington in Warwickshire. We work in partnership with West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) which provides the ambulance service in a large portion of the Midlands including Warwickshire. Community First Responders (CFRs) are volunteers, trained to a nationally-recognised (BTEC) standard to provide live saving treatment to people in the community. CFRs are called out by WMAS to life-threatening, emergency, medical calls within our area providing vital 'first-person-on-scene' assistance to people who are ill or injured prior to the arrival of the ambulance crew.

The Community First Responder Scheme is a national initiative and is an integrated part of the ambulance service. There are around 1,500 Community First Responders working across the WMAS region. We are backed up by a WMAS CFR Coordinator for Coventry & Warwickshire who is a full-time member of staff (Paramedic) at WMAS. He/she is further supported by regional CFR coordinators who support all the CFR schemes in their part of Warwickshire and provide close liaison between the individual schemes and WMAS. They also coordinate all our training and assessments. We operate to a strict deployment protocol and operating procedures set by West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

We are all volunteers who give our time to respond to callouts, train and fundraise free-of-charge. In common with all CFR Schemes, we receive no funding from WMAS or the NHS and so we are totally dependant on fundraising in our communities in order for the Scheme to operate.

WMAS will alert the team if there is a 999-call which needs an urgent response in our coverage area. We currently have seven Community First Responders and, for a large proportion of the time, we are able to provide 24 x 7 cover. For more information on our coverage area, please see further detailed information here.

You can find out more about the West Midlands Ambulance Service CFR Scheme here.

You can find out more about what we do here. Primarily, we will be called to attend 'Category A' and 'Category B' calls which fall within our designated response area. These are deemed by the ambulance service to be "Serious and/or life threatening" and therefore, by their very nature, need medical help to arrive as quickly as possible. When a '999' call is made within our local area, the Ambulance Service despatches an ambulance crew to the scene as normal. At the same time they will contact the Community First Responder who is on-duty. You can find out more about how the callout system works here.

One of the most important conditions that we will be asked to cover is where the patient has suffered a cardiac arrest. The defibrillator, the most vital piece of equipment that the First Responders carry, would be used to deliver a controlled shock to attempt to put the patient's heart back into a normal rhythm. In these circumstances, the patient's heart needs to receive a shock as quickly as possible; ideally within the first 5 to 10 minutes after they have collapsed. The quicker this can happen, the better the chances of survival. The role of the Community First Responder is graphically illustrated in what is known as the 'chain of survival' drawing:

First Responders provide the second and third links in the chain; "Early CPR" and "Early Defibrillation". In other words, they considerably help to bridge the gap between the 999 call ("Early Access") and the arrival of the paramedic crew ("Early Advanced Care").

Although Community First Responders are an integrated part of the WMAS, only a minimal amount of equipment is provided by WMAS. The vast majority of the costs of setting-up and running the service has to be met by fundraising within the community itself. The defibrillators alone (of the type that we are using in Ettington) cost around £1,000 each. We rely on fundraising and kind donations from local people, businesses and organisations to enable us to purchase equipment and to keep the scheme operational.

A list of all our Supporters is here. However, on this Home page we particularly want to highlight the major contribution that Ettington Parish Council has made to the Scheme. Ettington Parish Council awarded the scheme a significant amount of money in order to get the Scheme underway in the first place. Without that major initial donation, it's highly unlikely that the Scheme could have been started in 2009 as the initial funding requirement would have been too high for fundraising activities. Subsequently, Ettington Parish Council has made a second award to help fund the expansion of the Scheme. In short, there is only a Scheme running in Ettington - and across the extended Ettington Ward - because of the commitment that Ettington Parish Council made in November 2008.

First Responders are trained and periodically assessed by WMAS. They also have to have passed a CRB check.

Our website will tell you more about the service that we operate, how it works in partnership with WMAS and how it is funded. If you have any comments, questions or (better still!) would like to join us, please contact us.

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Heart and trace logo design copyright © 2011 Ettington Community First Responder Scheme. This image shall not be used by any other organisation without express written permission of Ettington Community First Responder Scheme.