Our rural fire services rely heavily on volunteers. Ensuring adequate crewing levels for our brigades is essential for protecting the environment and communities vulnerable to bushfires. There are increasing concerns that future volunteer numbers may decline in some communities. Potential threats to the number of volunteer firefighters come from several sources.

In some rural communities economic and demographic factors result in declining and ageing populations and some new housing developments in previously rural areas have low levels of community participation in voluntary activities. Structural changes to employment, social and economic pressures on families, may also restrict opportunities for volunteering. The Bushfire CRC’s Volunteerism project is providing fire services with information to help strategic planning and policy development concerning volunteer numbers, and is suggesting new ways of recruiting and supporting volunteer workforces.

The project team is conducting research into factors impacting on the recruitment of future volunteers and the retention of current volunteers. Research is utilising surveys, interviews with current volunteers, case studies of best practice brigades, and surveys of employers of volunteers. The project is also tracking the experiences of new volunteer recruits as they move through recruitment, induction, training, and initial deployments to fires and related emergency incidents.

Project Leader: Jim McClennan, Latrobe University, Ph: (03) 9479 1747, Email: j.mclennan@latrobe.edu.au