Trentham’s Ethan Brown is campaigning for a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) for his home town to assist with faster response times for medical emergencies.
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The town has an interesting demographic with an influx of younger families moving to the area, but it also has an increasingly ageing population.
Mr Brown has lived in the town for his entire life and has been observing changes.
“I have been observing the town growing really quickly,” he said. “There have been a lot of people talking about a CERT team but nobody has put together a campaign so I thought I would really push this along.”
A CERT team is comprised of a team of volunteer first responders who are dispatched at the same time as paramedics after a 000 call.
They are trained by Ambulance Victoria and enable a more timely response to medical emergencies in regional and rural areas by prepping and supporting patients while waiting for an ambulance.
Mr Brown said his friend had recently been in a serious car accident as a result of seizures and had it not been for his and the man’s wife knowing CPR through their role as CFA firefighters, it would have been a long and distressing wait for an ambulance to attend the scene.
“If there is support from the community, there is more likelihood we can get this off the ground,” Mr Brown said. “But we need government support too.”
Despite there being a CERT team in nearby Blackwood, Mr Brown believes a team in Trentham would benefit the booming town and take pressure off the Blackwood volunteers.