CHILDREN are taking part in an innovative scheme to boost awareness and learn valuable life-long skills.

Millom School has teamed up with local firefighters to enable its pupils to take part in an exciting personal development programme.

For 12 weeks firefighters will be taking part in highly intensive training sessions to see more about life in the service first hand.

Mike Dobson, crew manager for Barrow and Millom, believes the scheme will help equip young people with vital life-long skills.

He said: "The Young Firefighter programme is a 12-week course where young people are exposed to 30 hours of training on what we do as firefighters.

"The top and bottom of it is about teaching life skills to young people.

"It's about teamwork, communication, leaderships, attendance and punctuality."

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Young Firefighters is a popular scheme that has been running in the area since 2005.

The aim of the Young Firefighters Scheme is to encourage young people to develop a whole range of skills by undertaking fire and rescue activities such as firefighting demonstrations, basic firefighting skills, road traffic awareness and first aid and safety skills.

Towards the end of the course, students will be carrying out complex firefighting tasks such as dealing with road traffic collisions, which calls on them to take the roof off a car and remove the person inside.

By taking part in these activities, young people can better understand the fire and safety risks they encounter every day and be better equipped to deal with any issues they face.

In addition, these sessions enable them to develop valuable transferable skills such as teamwork and leadership skills, communication, confidence building and health and safety awareness.

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Mr Dobson says these life-long skills can be applied to all walks of life are highly desirable to any future employer.

He said: "It's not necessarily about getting them to embark on a career in the fire service but if they do it's fantastic.

"One of the lads on my first course became an apprentice of mine in Barrow and is now back in Millom as a retained firefighter. He's now one of the instructors.

"However a lot have gone elsewhere and are having fantastic careers.

"A lot of local employers are really, really impressed by this course."