Street pastor volunteer appeal

CHESHIRE people are to be trained on how to help police and other blue light services during emergency situations.

The volunteers will be given training on how to help emergency services in the aftermath of a major incident such as a terrorist attack, flooding or major stabbings. It is under a new scheme run by street pastors and funded by David Keane, the county’s police and crime commissioner.

The trained response pastors will be deployed into an area to deal with the aftermath of the incident, either working outside the emergency cordon offering supervision as directed by the emergency services or providing practical or emotional support to victims.

PCC David Keane said: “Street pastors do a fantastic job supporting vulnerable people who are enjoying a night out in our towns and cities and I’m very happy to see them expanding their role in this new scheme to cover major incidents. Thankfully, major incidents occur very infrequently in Cheshire but when they do, the emergency services have many responsibilities including securing the area around the incident and ensuring people close-by have appropriate support.

“These are two aspects our response pastors will be trained to help with.

“This will help to take the pressure off the police and medical services, who will be able to devote their time and resources to more specialist aspects of the incident.

“Working in such traumatic circumstances is very difficult and I’m immensely grateful that the street pastors are expanding their role in this way.”

A Street Pastors spokesman added: “Street pastors will receive additional training to be able to be deployed into the aftermath of a major incident or emergency, such as the Manchester Arena bombing.

“Without the support of the police and crime commissioner, we would have struggled to get this important project off the ground.”