Chapter Seven: Observing Interactions

Chapter Seven: Observing Interactions

Introduction

In this chapter, I will start by revisiting some of the community safety interventions that AFRS conduct, In this chapter, I have chosen to present a more narrative description of events, with the use of vignettes (Denzin 2000, Miles, Huberman 1999), which allow for a greater engagement with the events themselves. Vignettes necessarily produce an abstracted account (Erikson 1986) and for this reason, multiple vignettes are presented, with an accompanying commentary. In addition to the vignette in the Preface, I will present three vignettes from different community interventions: one from a HFSV following an emergency attendance; one from a community event; and, one from a series of HFSVs. This is followed by corresponding analysis of the vignettes before a concluding section of this chapter.

I used this study to build on data collated in the two previous studies and the methodology for this study is discussed in some detail in Chapter Four. In the first study, I spent time in fire service locations observing fire fighters and other fire service personnel acting within their group and interacting with the public. In the second study, I used focus groups to examine how residents viewed their neighbourhoods, and the ways in which this informed their identities, before moving on to question participants about their perceptions of and relationships with the fire service. Although both of these studies produced invaluable data about both fire fighters and residents in different Bristol neighbourhoods, they could only partially answer questions about the relationship between these two groups. In this third and final study, I wanted to test some of the findings that had arisen previously, and examine, in greater detail, the relationship, working from some of the presuppositions of social identity approaches (Tajfel, Turner 2003 (1979), Abrams, Hogg 1999), as discussed in more detail in the first of the literature review chapters. This was achieved by both observing new interactions, and by revisiting my fieldnotes from earlier work to reconstruct experiences.

As with many public services, the fire service have moved from a response to a preventive role over recent years (Matheson, Manning, Williams, 2011) with an increasing emphasis on community and social interventions to prevent fire. In part, this has been in line with, for example, health promotion or crime prevention type initiatives, but has also been encouraged by a change in the funding mechanisms for fire services, who are no longer paid according to the number of house fires attended (a regime which clearly disincentivised preventive working). At a household level, the primary method of engagement is the home fire safety visit (HFSV), where fire fighters come to the house, fit (or test) smoke alarms and go through a range of safety literature with the householder. However, the fire service do not limit their interventions to those in the home. Raising the profile of the service, and disseminating fire safety messages to the general public is also a key concern, and is achieved in a number of (more or less successful) ways. Attendance at community events, from a Halloween party at a community centre to staffing a stand at big regional events such as the Harbour Festival, allows fire fighters to be seen by and to speak with a wide cross section of the public.

Delivering targeted interventions

For a number of years, fire services have tailored messages to particular sectors of the community (for example smokers), but in recent years, this has become more sophisticated. As with risks for other social problems (for example, ill health or crime), risk is concentrated in certain, poorer, geographical areas (Smith, Lepine et al. 2007), and amongst poorer sections of the public. Further, there are two separate risk factors at play: causing a fire (either deliberately or accidentally) and being a victim of a fire. There are strong socio-demographic links to risk of fire (Smith, Wright et al. 2007), and again, these are closely correlated to measures of poverty. Smith et al find that those most likely to be victims of fire include those experiencing deprivation, single people/single parents, those experiencing mental or physical impairment, those using smoking materials carelessly and heavy drinkers. It is not unreasonable to suppose that these last four groups are also concentrated within people experiencing deprivation, and so, as other research demonstrates, there is a close correlation between poverty and the risk of fire (Arson Control Forum 2004). There are a number of reasons for this which are both social (for example smoking and drinking) and structural (poorer housing stock, overcrowding) resulting in a pressing case for the delivery of strong fire safety messages in poorer communities. Further, geodemographic tools, such as those used by the police, can assist the fire service in delivering the right messages in the right areas (Williamson, Ashby et al. 2006), ensuring that poverty may be addressed as a risk factor in fire prevention.

Recent government research (Communities and Local Government 2008, Mackenzie, Bannister et al. 2010) has extended these arguments, suggesting that perception of risk also has an impact on risk behaviours. This suggests that there are groups, such as ‘conscientious’ smokers, who are ignoring fire safety messages, and who could be encouraged to do more. Fire safety messages and interventions are therefore targeted specifically at some groups more than others, depending on both the level of risk and the perceived level of permeability of those social groups to safety messages. At some levels, there may be a degree of resistance within the fire service to focussing resources on groups that are seen as less permeable, to an extent due to issues of finite resourcing but also to supposed ‘deservingness’ of client groups, for instance heavy drinkers or drug users, who tend not to be viewed with great sympathy by fire fighters (Murray, Lister et al. 1996).

Considerable work has been conducted in a number of fields relating to concentrations of poverty in particular geographic areas, and the way in which this self perpetuates (Sibley 1999, Young 1999, Levitas 2006), and many agencies now target work accordingly (Williamson, Ashby et al. 2006, Wallace 2001). However, the fire service have been slow to come to this type of analysis, instead focussing on their target groups, especially members of BME communities, single parents, the elderly and the disabled. Using a more geographical approach could potentially focus their resources where other agencies are, achieving economies of scale and fitting in with neighbourhood based approaches gaining currency in social policy debates (Smith, Lepine et al. 2007). However, there are ongoing tensions in delivering interventions in these areas, both in relation to the fire service, and from a generalised ‘intervention fatigue’ common to a lot of hard pressed neighbourhoods.

Further risk factors relate to fire related ASB. This includes behaviours such as fire setting, hoax calls and anti social use of fireworks. This behaviour is typically concentrated amongst young people and is responded to somewhat differently to other fire safety messages, with more youth engagement type work which attempts to establish relationships and rapport with young people, whilst also disseminating fire safety messages related to these behaviours.

In this section, I have looked briefly at risks for fires which the fire service hope to address through their interventions. These risk factors are likely to apply across the UK, and indeed beyond, although the exact pattern of risk concentration will differ according to local factors. In the next section, I will look at some of the interventions to address these risk factors put in place by AFRS across the Avon area.

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