National Lead Sarah Grant and District Coordinator Jess Nesbit delve into the Ahikura programme, community engagement, and cultural responsiveness in fire safety
What is the Ahikura Whānau-Centred Education Programme?
Ahikura Whānau-Centered Education Programme aims to provide fire safety education for taiohi and their whānau (families).
Ahikura is less about intervening and more about educating the young person about the dangers of fire and how to be safe around it.
It’s more than just a safety course, we build meaningful relationships with taiohi and whānau to help them towards a brighter future.
What inspired the foundation of the Ahikura programme, and how has it evolved over the past 30 years?
The programme, originally known as Fire Awareness Intervention Programme (FAIP), was established to address the needs of children and young people, aged five to 17, who have shown an unhealthy interest in fire, such as bringing a lighter or matches to school to play with or watching unsafe fire videos online.
Importantly, children and young people were also becoming overrepresented in our fire deaths and injury stats as a result of playing with fire, so it was imperative that a concerted effort was made to address this.
Over the last three decades, FAIP has developed into a well-respected programme, building solid relationships within communities, and helping our children and young people get back on the right track.
However, by 2022, we were seeing a decrease in the number of children and young people being referred to us.
To understand this decline, we commissioned a research report from Victoria University in Wellington.
The report found several areas for improvement.
While the programme was incrementally updated from time to time to align with international best practices, a lot has changed since the programme’s inception.
We needed to better promote the programme and its benefits to children and young people, improve the accessibility and availability of information about Ahikura and provide continual training for our practitioners.
We also needed to improve our collaboration with referrers, broaden our engagement to include our cultural communities and refresh the programme content to be engaging, interactive and culturally responsive.
So, we’ve collaborated with practitioners, partner agencies, young people and their whānau to improve how the programme is delivered.
Ahikura is the result of this mahi.
We’ve renewed the programme’s commitment to taiohi and strengthened our engagement ethos to focus on building relationships and forming a close connection with the young people we work with to help them towards a more positive future.
How does Ahikura tailor its approach to accommodate the diverse needs of taiohi and their whānau across different ages and cultural backgrounds?
We play a short but important role in the lives of the taiohi we work with.
Through our education and our approach of treating young people as precious taonga (treasure) and upholding their mana (the right of a young person to have agency in their lives and the decisions that affect them), our programme helps to connect young people and their whānau to a safer future.
Right from the beginning, we show respect and work to build whanaungatanga (a relationship through shared experiences) and a connection by understanding the background, culture and needs of the taiohi and whānau we work with.
Whanaungatanga is an important foundation for learning and without it, our programme wouldn’t be as successful.
Once we’ve established whanaungatanga, we get into the mahi (work) of the programme.
We have dedicated resources for different age groups and for different learning abilities.
And to ensure our resources have the best chance of resonating with young people, we don’t share them outside of our sessions.
Can you share insights into the process of establishing trust and whanaungatanga with the families you work with?
First, we seek to understand as much as possible about the referral, so we can match the right Ahikura practitioner with the taiohi they’ll be working with.
When a practitioner arrives at the home of the whānau they’ll be working with, they observe the types of activities and interests the child or young person has.
This helps to create conversation and build rapport between all parties.
This is a key part of building the foundation and may happen quickly or it can take time.
No two cases are the same and the journey for one whānau can take longer than the journey for another; the important thing is allowing the practitioner to take the time needed to build trust.
For a child or young person and their whānau, the education session can be a stressful time, so our practitioners are trained to understand how the brain and body respond to stress and how to counteract that stress response.
This can include things like clearly explaining what is happening and what to expect, talking about what taiohi feel proud or confident about, involving movement or sensory activities such as drawing or playing a game.
During these activities, our practitioners sit alongside the young people they work with, rather than face to face, as this decreases danger signals taiohi may feel and signifies we’re equals in this journey.
This considered and personalised approach is what’s needed to create a sense of security and trust that’s so important to the success of the programme.
What are some of the common challenges you encounter when educating taiohi and their whānau about fire safety?
One of the biggest challenges we face as Ahikura practitioners is the initial contact with the whānau and them agreeing to a time for their taiohi to participate in the Ahikura programme.
Some of the families we work with are engaged with multiple agencies, and we don’t necessarily appear at the top of their list.
How do you measure the success of the Ahikura programme, and what feedback have you received from the communities involved?
There are several measures we’ve put in place to monitor the programme’s performance to ensure we deliver on the recommendations made by the Victoria University research.
It’s still relatively early days for Ahikura and we know it takes time to embed a new way of doing things amongst a large team of practitioners spread across the country, however, we’re already seeing improvements.
Since we’ve implemented a marketing strategy to reach both referrers and the general public, we’ve seen a 22% increase in referrals.
The rate of recidivism among young people is also an important indicator of our mahi.
In the 30+ years our programme has been running, less than ten percent of those who completed our programme continue with risky fire behaviour.
We are monitoring the numbers and hope to continue to reduce recidivism.
Since the launch of Ahikura, we’ve really focused on engaging with the social agencies we rely on to make the referrals.
It’s heartening to see that many of them, such as Oranga Tamariki, have integrated Ahikura into their processes to support their own practitioners to guide the taiohi they work with towards Ahikura, if that’s what’s needed.
This is good not only for the young people that haven’t yet engaged with us but also good for strengthening our relationships with our partners.
And of course, we are proud to receive positive feedback from taiohi we’ve worked with and their whānau once the programme has been completed.
In what ways does Ahikura collaborate with other agencies and organisations to support the whānau during and after the programme?
The Ahikura practitioners, supported by local Fire and Emergency personnel, work closely with partner agencies such as kura (schools), Police, Youth Aid and Oranga Tamariki (Ministry for Children), to raise awareness of the programme through various presentations and meet ups.
We’re on a continuous journey with the partner agencies we work with.
Building and maintaining relationships helps us to have a smooth transition when a child or young person is referred to Ahikura which helps reduce the potential stress and uncertainty that many whānau experience.
And, throughout the programme, if a practitioner feels that a family could benefit from further support from our partner agencies, they’ll talk to the whānau about who could help them and what the benefits would be.
Looking towards the future, how do you envision the Ahikura programme evolving to meet new challenges in fire education?
As we move forward on the Ahikura journey, we are continuously reviewing and evaluating the programme.
This involves working closely with our practitioners, partner agencies, taiohi and their whānau to ensure our approaches and resources are relevant and remain fit-for-purpose.
The Ahikura programme continues to grow and adapt to new challenges we face; whether it’s a worldwide pandemic or new behavioural issues emerging amongst the taiohi we work with, we adapt our approach and keep going.
Finally, for those interested in supporting or learning more about Ahikura, what advice would you give or what steps should they take?
Ahikura is an internationally renowned programme: we’ve collaborated with a wide range of similar programmes around the world and several fire services have used our resources and processes.
We’re happy to share what we’ve learnt.
To find out more about Ahikura, visit https://fireandemergency.nz/home-fire-safety/kids-and-parents/ahikura/ or reach out to ahikura@fireandemergency.nz
This article was originally published in the June 2024 issue of International Fire & Safety Journal. To read your FREE digital copy, click here.