Essex County Fire & Rescue Service (ECFRS) Watch Manager Chris Hurrell and Firefighter Ben Andrews taught lifesaving paediatric first aid to 25 South Woodham Ferrers residents.

The session was held at South Woodham Ferrers Fire Station and covered assessing patients, giving CPR to children, using a defibrillator, how to deal with choking, and how to dress burns, wounds, breaks and fractures.

Watch Manager Chris Hurrell said: "This was the first of - hopefully - many sessions we plan to hold to help people give first aid to children if needed. As firefighters, we wanted to share some of this lifesaving knowledge with our communities.

"We had about 17 adults and eight children taking part. While we hope that residents will never need to put their skills to the test, we also hope they feel more confident in handling a situation where first aid would need to be given.

Visit South Woodham Ferrers Fire Station's Facebook page for more information and session dates.

Chris and Ben are both on-call firefighters, who both live or work within five minutes of South Woodham Fire Station and are paid to respond to incidents when paged.

ECFRS is encouraging other residents who live or work within five minutes of an on-call fire station to sign up and be paid to protect the community as an on-call firefighter. Find out more via the ECFRS website.

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