A RECENT visit to the West Midlands Fire Service Training Academy gave Level 3 military and emergency services students at NEW College the opportunity to witness first hand the assessment process for the new Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP).

NEW College has been working on a strengthening partnerships within the uniformed public services in order to provide students with real life work experience during their studies and this involvement in the JESIP process is another link within the industry.

The JESIP joint doctrine aims to define what the operational and tactical commanders from police, fire and ambulance will do on the scene during the initial stages of a major or complex incident.

The students took part in a series of major incident scenario based training exercises acting as casualties and bystanders. The incidents that were put into practice formed part of the assessment process for command and control officers for JESIP.

With many of the students on the course seeking careers in the emergency services, the exercises provided them with a unique, first hand opportunity to work alongside the professionals and experience being involved in major incident training.

Watch Manager of West Midlands Fire Service, Simon Griffiths, said: "The students made a real difference to the exercise and injected realism into the scenario by playing the part of causalities and people who had been involved in the crash.

"This also allows the officers devising the new command and control policies to observe the types of problems that the services face when responding to major incidents."

To find out more about the military and emergency services course and other courses offered at NEW College, there is an open evening on Wednesday, April 30. Alternatively, visit www.ne-worcs.ac.uk/public_services.