Evaluation of Aboriginal Community Home Fire Safety Visitation Program: for Fire Rescue NSW, Report 2

Aboriginal Community Home Fire Safety Visitation Program (ACHFSVP), was funded in the CRIP 2014/15. The program is deployed in areas with a strong representation of Aboriginal homes and entails proactive offer of the service to each house. Program delivery began on 1 July 2015. Each home visited is assured that they will have at least one working smoke alarm, have fire blanket(s) and home fire safety advice following checking of the house and information. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the ACHFSVP is integral to the CRIP funding and project evaluation report is a component to the deliverables. Western Sydney University (WSU) under the Community Resilience Innovation Program Funding Agreement 2014-15 obtained funding to undertake evaluation of the ACHFSVP. This is the second report on the evaluation of the program with the first report detailing the ACHFSVP program delivery process, delivery issues encountered due to Union action on home fire safety check (HFSC) program, and preliminary findings. Quantitative data on the deployment of the home fire safety checks program (HFSC) was provided by FRNSW for the period ending 12 December 2016. The list of stations that were delivering the ACHFSVP was supplied enabling the extraction of the program specific recipients and facilitating comparison with the mainstream HFSC. This was supplemented with qualitative data collection with field visits by the researcher together with an Aboriginal Liaison Officer/retained fire fighter. It was conducted in early May 2016 and was undertaken as part of the ACHFSVP deployment in Dubbo. In addition, interviews were conducted with permanent and retained firefighters. A total of 807 houses were door knocked by FRNSW delivery the ACHFSVP. For 573 households, they received the program inside the home and 37 obtained a discussion externally. For these homes visited, 1 out of 4 Aboriginal specific did not have a working smoke alarm. The fire brigade installed 422 smoke alarms and 424 ten-year batteries. In addition, by the brigade holding internal discussion enabled them to conduct a home fire safety check as per design. The ACHFSVP delivery included the use of Aboriginal Liaison Officers, Aboriginal firefighters or community representatives to conduct the home visit program to provide education, advice and intervention. In addition, they were most instrumental in providing access to the home and engagement with the residents. The stations that undertook the ACHFSVP were predominantly retained fire stations with three out of the eleven having staffing types of both permanent and retained firefighters. The delivery had been affected and constrained as it was identified to be a program specifically delivering the HFSC to Aboriginal households. The program funding began on 1 July 2015 at a period of time when the Fire Brigade Employees Union (FBEU) had banned HFSC work on March 2015. The ACHFSVP delivery was predominantly to blue collar workers low income cheap housing in regional housing (85%) and ageing citizens in low density areas of provisional towns (9%). For mainstream HFSC program, it had a greater focus on ageing citizens in low density areas (24%) and mixed families forms living on the outskirts of the metropolitan areas (17%). For three quarters of the homes visits had smoke alarms installed and ten-years batteries by FRNSW fire fighters. This suggests that for 1 out of 4 Aboriginal specific homes that were visited did not have an operational smoke alarm(s) prior to ACFSVP. This compares to mainstream delivery of HFSC that had 1 out of 3 homes did not have an operational smoke alarm. The ACHFSVP was appropriately targeted and implemented. It was well received in the community through the use of local Aboriginal elders and/or community representatives. The number of homes that received the program reflects the strong acceptance in the community of the program and its mode of administration.