27/10/2023
It’s with great sadness that we have to close the Barmouth responder page, and suspend the team activities.
Over the past 15+ years the team has had its members come and go due to personal and private reasons. Unfortunately like other teams along the coast we have struggled for members. We were running the team with basically two members, after Glyn left to join the ambulance service full-time, however he continued to help the team from behind the scenes.
I myself had to stand down for a period of time due to a serious medical condition that restricted my fitness to undertake certain tasks, likewise with Damian working full-time in an industry that became extremely busy during the summer months, we both found it difficult or if not sometimes unmanageable to undertake the amount of courses and requirements that the ambulance service were asking ourselves to undertake. After long deliberation, and chatting with Damian, it was decided that the team could no longer go on with such demands being asked of us with the ongoing training.
This was a difficult decision to come to, but after a conversation yesterday with the ambulance service, informing both Damian and myself that we had to reapply to become responders and undergo full training, enough was enough. They need to understand that we both run businesses and our time is also precious to ourselves. The training is unpaid and lasts a week, this does not take into consideration the continuing refresher training, and other course works that have to be done online and attending other training sessions.
We are fully aware that training is necessary to keep our skills updated. This was never the problem, the problem was most of this was during the summer months with what seemed to be a lack of understanding or sympathy. Taking a week out of work that would have been unpaid is simply not manageable having a family to support.
Sadly, this felt like just another let down in regards to the years of service that the Barmouth team had put in. Several years ago we had fantastic support and understanding, but like everything in life people move on and that support and understanding seemed to fall away.
During the Covid crisis the team offered our community a prescription delivery service that subsequently got the team awarded the Queens award for voluntary services, Damian and myself attended Buckingham Palace to receive thanks. However the team did not receive any recognition from the ambulance service or even a letter of and congratulations for becoming the first community first responder team to receive such an award.
If the ambulance service intends to continue and expand the first responder voluntary service they seriously need to look at the demands and requests they are putting on volunteers! It is clear that the ambulance service itself is just not coping with the amount of work they are being asked to do and with communities like ourselves being stripped of our resources, community first responder teams will become vitally important. I urge the ambulance service to consider the direction they are taking.
We hope that in the future a new first responder team will be set up in town to cover our community and its surroundings, as ex first responders we will be happy to offer any support that is required to help the team along, with any advice we can offer but in the meantime not wishing to leave this post on a negative note we have been in discussion with Glyn and Cllr Triggs to offer a suggestion whereupon you may still see some of us about offering our support to the community, but these are early days.
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