Community Safety - Assignment Example

? Running Head: Community Safety Community Safety [Institute’s Community Safety Responsible Parties and Partners: The responsibility of keeping a community safe from harm is one, which undeniably belongs to every member of the community. There are, however, a few organizations, which the community will deem especially responsible for safety. As far as fire is concerned, the fire and rescue department is the main authority responsible. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order of 2005 pertaining to the UK lists a number of authorities, which it holds responsible for the function of community safety. These authorities are responsible for different areas and premises. They include the fire and safety authority operating in areas of residence, the Health and Safety Executive who is responsible for areas of the Navy and other such areas, local authorities and finally any fire inspectors or fire services maintained by the Secretary of Defense. All of these are the enforcing authorities for the fire safety of the community ("The regulatory reform," 2005). One authority alone however, cannot deal with an issue as huge as community safety. When dealing with projects as large as the one of reducing incidence of fires amongst a whole community of immigrant workers, a partnership between different agencies and authorities is important. This is because different authorities and agencies have access to different parts of the community, and have control over different aspects of the lives of the people. The police department is one, which may assist this authority from time to time. The police could do this by reinforcing the law pertaining to smoke detectors. In the US, it is illegal to deactivate a fire alarm in one’s home. Deactivation of this alarm can lead to heavy fines, since it poses a serious threat for the dwellers of the household. This implies that there is an important role the police can play in the reducing the risk of fire-related incidents. To do this, they could follow cases of reported fires where smoke detectors were not present to indicate the fire on time. To the people involved in such a fire, the police could issue warnings of heavy fines or punishment for not having had properly functioning smoke detectors. This would ensure that these citizens would heed the advice to keep properly functioning smoke detectors, thus reducing the incidence of fires, which the fire brigades could not stop on time due to absence of smoke detectors. One can sought out other parties that can be helpful in reducing the incidents through evaluation of the situation for its causes. This is possible through a problem-oriented approach. The situation involves immigrant workers who live in rented accommodation, and do not have smoke detectors or the proper education when it comes to safety from fire. So when helping these people to prevent fires, one can pin down several root causes for when these people experience fires in their living quarters. Firstly, they live in rented space, for which they are not responsible. Thus, they do not deem themselves liable to arrange for smoke detectors. Then, they may not be aware of the importance or necessity of smoke detectors in ones living quarters. In addition, they may not be aware of the basic procedures for prevention from fire hazards, since they may not have learned about them from the country they have migrated. Thus to remedy all these problems, the relevant authorities must be included in the solution. As far as the rent-tenant problem is concerned, the authority concerned with tenant-landlord laws must make the tenants aware the property owner is legally bound to provide them with a safe, health hazard-free living environment. The fire department should ensure that smoke detectors are available to any citizen who wishes to get them. Emergency healthcare services and immigration authorities should collaborate to ensure a final, very important factor. This is that each person who receives the permission to immigrate to the country is given a brief educational session about health and safety hazards, which includes fire hazards. The emergency healthcare services are important here to ensure that the session completes the important points. The immigration authorities are important since they have direct contact with any immigrants entering the country. This way, the immigration services can also ensure the increased safety of all new citizens as well as the existing ones. Distinction between immigrants and existing citizens: One must keep in mind that these immigrants are coming from a background of fire safety very different from where they will be living from now on. If a Pakistani immigrant is living in the UK, she will notice many differences in fire safety precautions. Precautionary instruments such as fire escapes, for example, are not present in buildings in Pakistan, while they are a part of every building in London. Smoke detectors, while found in most offices and industrial areas in Pakistan, are almost nowhere to be found in houses and apartments. Fire extinguishers are also present in industrial buildings, while absent from homes in Pakistan. All these factors make the fire precaution rules taught in the UK very different from what an immigrant from Pakistan will know of. It is thus necessary to educate these immigrants with all the basics. In addition, they need to learn to be more careful, since the houses they will find in countries are wooden and vulnerable to fire, whereas the houses in Pakistan are made of bricks, and thus safer from fire. Practical Implication of this strategy: The suggestions presented so far roughly guide us towards a strategy for reducing the risk of fire amongst the community. Our example pertains to the part of the community, which consists of immigration workers, who have been living in London in rented accommodation without the necessary fire precautions and equipment. This has been causing fires to occur in their homes very often, and the London Fire Brigade is seriously concerned for the safety of these people as well as the people living around these immigrants. They thus devise a strategy consisting of curing this problem by the roots. They see the roots of the problem to lie in two main reasons, inadequate education amongst the immigrants about fire prevention, and the absence of smoke detectors from their homes. They can remedy the absence of smoke detectors by providing the immigrants with these devices. If the funds do not allow the Brigade to do so free of cost, they could consider providing a subsidy on these devices for the immigrants, who may have been hesitant to undertake the important task of fireproofing their homes due to the additional cost they would incur in the process. If this is not an effective strategy to get the homes of all the immigrants fitted with smoke detectors, the Brigade could request the assistance of the police of London. This could include the London Police as well as the Metropolitan Police Service. The help of these authorities would be necessary when trying to enforce the laws regarding smoke detectors. Under the Smoke Detectors Act of 1991, a newly constructed building needs to be fitted with a smoke detector ("Smoke detectors act, pp. 1, 1991). If the current owners refuse to install smoke detectors in the building under their ownership, they are committing an offence. They are thus liable to the local authorities. The property owners in our example are not clear about these laws, which may be why they have not fitted the dwellings they have lent to others with smoke detectors. Thus, after the fire has occurred in these areas, it is the combined duty of the London Fire Brigade and the London Police to issue a warning to the landlords, about installing smoke detectors as per law or having to pay the legal fines ("Smoke detectors act, pp. 4, 1991). Both authorities cannot carry out this task alone, and thus a partnership is necessary to ensure the safety of the community. The next root of the problem the Fire Brigade has to deal with is the lack of education about fire prevention amongst these immigrants. A general remedy to the problem of insufficient awareness is usually to conduct awareness programs, at schools, workplaces and through the media. These campaigns are the reason why the people of developed countries are well informed about safety against fire, especially in the US and the UK (Mallonee and Istre, pp.28, 1996). However, this strategy is for when the problem is nationwide, for when there is unawareness and lack of education throughout the city or nation. The problem at hand, however, pertains to a certain group of people: the immigrant workers. The rest of the citizens are mostly already educated about these procedures (Mallonee and Istre, pp.28, 1996). Thus to conduct a citywide awareness campaign to educate only this group would be a waste of resources, not to mention a needless strain on already limited resources. A wiser idea would be to limit this awareness campaign to the group of immigrant workers only. To achieve this, the Brigade would need to locate an authority who deals specifically with this group of people. In the case of UK, the London Fire Brigade could contact the Home Office for help. The Home Office describes themselves as the leading government department pertaining to immigration. It is thus inevitable that each worker who migrates to London will be in contact with this authority. This way, the authority will have contact with not only the immigrants already residing in London, but also with the new immigrants hoping to live in London. This can be used greatly to the advantage of the parties involved. The Brigade could request the Home Office to give each immigrant entering the city a brief educational presentation about fire safety and hazard prevention. If one video presentation is developed, the authority could use them repeatedly, as well as play in the immigration offices, which the potential immigrants are bound to visit. If a video presentation is not possible, they could distribute a flyer with basic safety instructions for fire prevention at such offices, to each immigrant who receives a visa to live in the UK. This would be a more timesaving and cost-effective way of delivering the same important message. These seemingly simple procedures would help greatly in remedying the significant problem of ignorance about fire prevention, and with the help of the mentioned authorities, they would be able to target the correct group of people. Possible, but less efficient alternatives: The strategy given above is one, which keeps each aspect of the situation in mind. There are several other strategies through which, the authorities could have spread the message of fire prevention in the community. However, the setbacks to those solutions outweighed their advantages. One such strategy could have been, as mentioned above, a citywide awareness campaign. While the suggested strategy recommends the employment of two main authorities, the Home Office and the London Fire Brigade, the citywide campaign would require several more authorities. It would require the cooperation of the education department of education to make the schools agree to run an educational campaign in their schools. It would require the cooperation of several organizations, for them to allow the educational campaign in their workplaces and offices. In addition, while this is an important message to spread ("Fire and rescue", pp.6, 2004), most of these authorities would consider this campaign redundant because the schools and workplaces already ensure that they teach the community about fire safety. It would thus be a futile exercise to include all these educated groups in the community in yet another awareness campaign, which aims to educate primarily the immigrant workers. More agencies, which would be involved for this large-scale campaign, include the media agency. To involve the newspaper agency and the television authorities in this campaign would be necessary for a campaign so widespread, and would be quite expensive. While this expense is more than acceptable if a campaign of this size is essential, there is simply not enough reason to invest that much capital when a much smaller-scale campaign is required. As far as the smoke detectors are concerned, one suggestion could be to threaten to impose fines on the first offence. That is, the police could start imposing fines the first time they catch any person without a smoke detector in their homes. This strategy would cause the people to take immediate action and install the devices in their homes. It would have, however had the definite drawback of raising resentment in the community. Households would then be following the law only because they feel as if they are pushed to do so, not because they realize the importance. To make them realize the importance of the installation, it is better to first issue warnings to all homeowners, to install the detectors if they do not already have them. Along with this suggestion, the authorities could inform the people of how many fires there have been recently at the homes of people who failed to install fire detectors. This use of persuasion as opposed to force would be not only a more popular strategy, but also ultimately a more permanent one, the effects of which would not wear out if the laws were relaxed at any point. Problem-Oriented Partnership Document Problem: Lack of awareness about fire prevention amongst immigrant workers, leading to frequent fires Location: London Roots of problem: No smoke detectors in the rented apartments of immigrants, and lack of information about prevention of fire Proposed Strategy: Issue warnings to people (especially to property owners as opposed to tenants), about imposition of fines, and small-scale awareness campaign amongst immigrants about basic fire safety procedures Involved Partners: London Fire Brigade, London Police, The Metropolitan Police Service and the Home Office (immigration authorities) Role of Different Partners: London Police will help enforce laws about smoke detectors to people the London Fire Brigade points out as people without smoke detectors. In addition, Immigration Services will help contact the immigrants residing in and entering London, so that the Fire Brigade can educate them about safety procedures References Fire and Rescue Services Act. 2004. The National Archives. Retrieved on January 19, 2011: www.legislation.gov.uk Mallonee, S., & Istre, G.R. 1996. “Surveillance and prevention of residential-fire injuries.” The New England Journal of Medicine. Volume 335, pp. 27-31. Smoke Detectors Act. 1991. The National Archives. Retrieved on January 19, 2011: www.legislation.gov.uk The Regulatory Reform (fire safety) Order. 2005. The National Archives. Retrieved on January 19, 2011: www.legislation.gov.uk Read More