Established nearly 20 years ago, the National Forest Responders are a group of people who volunteer their time to be trained by the 999 ambulance service and to respond to our local community in their greatest time of need..
Our group make up people of all ages and all walks of life. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be a medical guru to be one of us! While our group is extraordinarily lucky to boast that Drs, Paramedics and other medical professionals exist among our numbers, we are also lucky to have sales people, company directors, business consultants, operations managers, fast food workers, computer programmers, students and all kinds of other people who love their local community and want to give something back.
Typically, we respond from our own houses, giving each of our responders a full medical kit that is fundraised by the scheme (costing £2,000 per responder), allowing them to volunteer as many hours as they like from the comfort of their own homes and work around their busy lives. This enables us to carry on with our normal lives, while also being ready for action as soon as the call comes in.
Unlike other Community First Responder schemes, we do not run scheme cars. This allows us to keep our overheads low, remove the need for yearly fundraising events and allows us to focus more hours on our core mission of providing medical help to those who need it.
We average one emergency call every 4 hours, meaning that on any given day, we can almost guarantee that we will be able to make a difference right on our doorstep.
Further to this, we also provide community training, enabling our neighbours and local schools, businesses and other groups to be ready to help themselves and each other in an emergency as well as providing medical cover for local events to help them to keep running in this time of ever inflating costs.
We also hold regular internal training sessions, helping us to keep our skills sharp, learn from each other and people we have helped, find ways to improve and socialise as a diverse group of friends.
We are always growing and are always recruiting. If you are 18+, have a drivers license and want to give something back, then get in touch!