George Haddow
Advocates Outreach Program

The 2009-2010 effort will focus on growing the Advocates Program, making it more responsive, providing them the resources and tools to be effective and measuring their progress. In FY 2009, the Advocates Program will reach out to fire academies, chiefs and training officers and "senior" respected fire personnel to establish a lasting culture of firefighter safety in firehouses across the country.

To support this effort we will develop new partnerships with health and traffic safety groups, enhance the Everyone Goes Home® website, apply new web technologies and the internet for training and program delivery, reform the speakers bureau with new content and delivery training for consistency of messages, disseminate successful lessons learned and incorporate a fire prevention component that will support and enhance achieving our goals for the Advocates Program.

For 2009-2010, the Advocates program will focus on these top priorities:

1. Adopting the Firefighter Safety Training programs and curriculum in state fire training academies.
2. Working directly with fire chiefs and training officers to incorporate fire safety into all aspects of firefighting in individual firehouses.
3. Engaging directly with "senior" fire personnel who are respected and looked up to in individual firehouses to establish a safety culture in the firehouse.
4. Improving program delivery, adoption of lessons learned, training and communications through an enhanced Everyone Goes Home® website and other uses of the Internet.

The 10 Regional Advocates will take direct responsibility for securing the adoption of firefighter safety programs and curriculum in the state fire training academies. In 2004-2005, the State of Pennsylvania instituted the Courage to Be Safe® training program in all of its fire academies and LODDs fell on average more than 50% each year from the 2004 number. State and Local Advocates will be responsible for reaching out to fire chiefs and training officers.

Working with their regional advocates, each state and local advocate will identify those firehouses in their state that they will visit over the course of the grant period and the types of information to be collected and distributed in each firehouse. Advocates will report back through the Advocates Tracking Database the results of their visits. The number of visits to each firehouse will be determined and the state and local advocates will be held accountable for making these visits. Adequate financial resources to support travel to the firehouses is essential to the success of this program.