Durham Dales Valley First Aid

First Aid Training for Crook, Tow Law and Stanhope Community Centres in County Durham

This e mail to the County Durham Council Customer explains it all!!!

Dear Claire,

The 3 courses are now completed and you asked for some feedback on how the courses ran. All three courses ran really well and were well attended by all the participants. I only lost 2 participants out of all the courses. One was due to illness and the other was childcare issues i believe. The students were keen and always on time. It was clear at the beginning of each lesson they had read their notes and their knowledge was increasing. All three groups were a joy to teach as they interacted with me and asked frequent sensible questions which often promoted discussion which in turn promoted learning. For the assessment most were a little nervous, but, this makes me believe they cared about the assessment and becoming First Aiders. All bar 1 person passed the assessment and several people had to have 2 attempts, but passed on the second time. One lady cried with happiness on passing as it really did mean a lot to her to pass. I am quite a passionate person about First Aid and i felt genuinely proud of all the students and proud that Durham and the United Kingdom now has sensible, levelheaded, Emergency First Aid at Work people that have been well trained. I teach a lot up and down the length of the UK and i can genuinely say the calibre of people attending the course was high. This was due to their commitment, ability to listen and learn and willingness to be First Aiders. Claire, you have done extremely well organising such a series of training sessions, often against difficult odds. You should be proud of yourself.

I look forward to working with you in the future Yours,

Chris Hall

Leadership, Management and Survival course

Thrills and Skills for Life continue to run Leadership, Management and Survival courses. These courses continue to evolve and develop. Most recently we ran a course on our training grounds in Gloucester for a group of school girls from London. The week involved wild food preparation from mackerel to cockerels and living off the land, cooking with wild garlic and nettles. The girls lived in our tepees and the weather was wonderful all week. The girls made shelters in the woods and spent time navigating through the grounds to find wild food. We have also set up a mock disaster struck village now where the teams go in and have to use all their management, communication and leadership skills to rescue the victims. Set up feeding stations and conduct rebuilding projects. It is a real team test!

Coast to Coast Cycle Ride

Even if we say it ourselves we continue to go from strength to strength. Chris recently organised and helped run and coach a Coast to Coast Cycle ride on behalf of the Durham and Darlington NHS primary Care Trust from Whitehaven to Sunderland. Groups may find this difficult normally but the youngest member of this group was 65! The event was carried out over 4 days and every single member of the 25 strong pensioners group completed the ride. Thrills and Skills for Life organised the logistics, the bed and breakfasts and helped coach the team through from beginning to end. Well done all who took part!