Maintaining a CERT Program
Step 3: Planning Continuing Training
Planning and Conducting Refresher Training
Unless your CERTs exercise or are activated regularly, refresher training will be a necessity to keep skills sharp and interest high–it is the "use it or lose it" principle. If your community has experienced a major emergency or disaster recently, you may want to review your needs assessment and look for gaps in services.
Click on a topic to review additional information:
- Benefits of Continued Training
- Offering Advanced Training
- Soliciting Suggestions
- Tapping External Resources
Benefits of Continued Training
Be creative about training opportunities for CERT members. Training provides, not only skill improvement and maintenance, it provides an opportunity for you to interact more directly with the volunteers and it helps to maintain volunteer interest and involvement. Remember, you are building a local resource to help you and others.
Offering Advanced Training
You may also wish to present training to enhance CERT members' skills beyond the basic level. For example, some CERT program coordinators have offered training in:
- The Incident Command System (ICS)
- Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
- Automatic external defibrillator (AED)
- Advanced first-aid techniques
- Donations management
- Community relations
- Damage assessment
- Traffic control
- Animal control
Soliciting Suggestions
Your CERT volunteers may have suggestions for refresher or skill-enhancement training so be sure to invite their input. A good way to gain volunteer input is through interest surveys or focus groups, which can be combined with a periodic program evaluation.
Tapping External Resources
Some skill-enhancement training is available through outside organizations. Some sources that you can check for refresher or skill-enhancement training are listed below.
- The American Red Cross offers training in first aid, CPR, and AED. The Red Cross also has a variety of materials that may be of interest to CERT members.
- State emergency management agencies offer a variety of training programs and may be able to provide exercise design assistance.
- Local public and private agencies may have training that, if modified, would be useful for CERT volunteers (utility companies, Humane Society, ARES/RACES, police departments, National Weather Service, mental health departments, and more).
FEMA will help by placing CERT self-study materials and refresher quizzes on its website. Be sure to check the CERT site often for updated materials.