LAST week I talked about the South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) and in particular about the 999 response. This week I want to talk about the SCAS volunteers.

There are three types of volunteers:

- volunteer car drivers

- community first responders (CFRs)

- charity supporters.

The car drivers are very similar to Wantage’s Independent Advice Centre drivers, but focused on health only. They support the Non-Emergency Patient Transport Service by taking patients to pre-planned appointments.

The patients that they help have specific medical conditions and do not have access to their own transport, are unable to use public transport and don’t need an ambulance.

Community first responders are volunteers who are trained to attend certain types of emergency calls near where they live or work. Their aim is to reach a potential life threatening emergency in the first vital minutes before the ambulance arrives.

After attending an initial five-day training course and an annual refresher course, a CFR must be available at least 20 hours each month. Like the volunteer fire service the responders ‘respond’ from home or perhaps work.

In 2016/ 17 SCAS CFRs responded to 18,807 incidents, arriving on scene in an average of 5.44 minutes.

Our team is Wantage and the surrounding area and one of your friends or colleagues may already be a CFR.

The CFR scheme is 100 per cent funded by public donation not by the NHS so the charity supporters are also vital volunteers raising funds.

To find out more information, donate or join the volunteers as a driver, first responder or charity supporter see the website: sca-charity.org.uk, email volunteer@sca-charity.org.uk or call 01869 365000.

Finally, I got some facts wrong: in a recent article I said that most of the schools around us have been classified as at least ‘Good’ but only Chilton Primary School, Fitzwaryn Special School and King Alfred’s are classified as ‘Outstanding’. I was wrong. The Hendreds C of E Primary School received an Outstanding rating at the end of 2016.

We have two outstanding primary schools, one outstanding special school and one outstanding secondary school in the area.

However Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted could scrap the ‘outstanding’ ratings: she told MPs last year that she intended to have ‘discussions’ over getting rid of the grade. This may be a topic for a column after the election.