To get a licence to work as a doorman or a security officer, you need your piece of paper to say you’ve passed the training. But as anyone in the field will tell you, just because you have the badge, does not mean you are any good. The newcomer is only as good as the trainer and the training content – and some have called for first aid to be a part of the training required, as much as conflict management. One trainer of door staff, stewards and others makes the point that there’s more to it than first aid – there’s first aid awareness, which is not quite the same thing. Mark Rowe reports.
If someone’s lying on the floor of a stadium concourse, injured, calling for help and getting that person into the paramedic’s hands is only part of first aid. The Bradford fire. Hillsborough, Heysel. They are names of football stadium disasters to chill those old enough to remember, and experienced people in the field of stadium safety. Yet for newcomers into stewarding, who may not have been born when such events happened, it’s necessary to train stewards in why the fires and other fatal incidents happened, and what to do to prevent any future fatalities. Neil Alexander, chief assessor at Repton Training Limited, is an ex-military man who went into stadium safety (at Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea football clubs, rugby union grounds) and motor sport and pop concert work, besides classroom teaching.. <br><br>As he says, first aid awareness is giving stewards an idea of what their job is, if someone is injured: keeping other people away, cordoning the area, reporting via the radio – and later in paperwork – and contacting the emergency services. If it’s serious, it has to be a team effort: someone doing the radioing, others to form a human barrier, keeping the curious away and perhaps moving them along to the next exit; and making a gangway for first-aiders or St John Ambulance or others to reach the scene. One steward’s duty might be to stand where the ambulance is expected to arrive, to make sure the way is clear, and if necessary that the ambulance with injured person can leave promptly. Even if the part-time steward is not trained enough in first aid to give CPR, he might know enough about CPR to know how much room the person performing the operation needs. <br><br>All that said, as so often in private security, the chances are that the steward or security officer is the first person on the spot, who has to make a first diagnosis of the patient. As Neil says, the first aid teaching might not necessarily be enough so that the steward can work a defibrilator unit; but a steward can judge for example how much of a space has to be cordoned off, if there is blood or sick around. "You also have other things – the risk factor – why is the patient out there? Obviously in a football stadium, there’s lots of stairwells; did the person slip, was it ice, wet; have they tripped over a pie on the stairs? Did a hand-rail crumble, or the flooring? Or were they pushed?" Does CCTV cover the area – so that the control room can view? Did anyone witness the accident – if it is an accident? Some of these tasks are more for a superviser. Even when the injured person has been moved away, someone has to decide if the crowd can be allowed back into the area; or police might want to investigate – is it a crime scene? "But it’s all teamwork," Neil repeats. <br><br>As Neil does the steward Edexcel NVQ level three spectator safety assessing at large clubs such as Sheffield Wednesday and Middlesbrough FC. As in as in any gathering of tens of thousands of people, everyday things can go wrong with people who happen to be at the football: asthma attacks, angina, strokes, seizures. What are the signs, the symptoms? Bearing in mind that alcohol is on sale at the ground, and fans may have had a drink beforehand. As with so much in life, it’s not only what you do, but the way you do it. Be gentle, Neil advises, rather than shout ‘are you all right mate!’. Some forethought can make a difference – if, by the time the first-aider has arrived, the steward has realised that the patient may need something to rest under the head. Neil, a SIA licence-holder himself, agrees that there are similar considerations for a security officer team in a shopping centre; or for door staff in a pub or club. Also, similar principles apply in case of fire: work as a team, keep customers away, and get them outside, and bring the emergency services in; besides the workings of the fire extinguisher and the different types of fire. And the word ‘customers’ has been deliberate, for Neil teaches customer care too, because a football club is a business, and the people coming through the turnstiles are paying customers, and should be treated as such. <br><br>On a door, according to Neil, door supervisers ought to be taught the difference between someone who is drunk, and who looks drunk (and might be ill in a way not to do with drink – or made worse by a drink, such as schizophrenia). He says: "It’s no good with a heavy-handed approach, because you could make a situation worse." The patient may become confused, disorientated, or frustrated. The patient’s friends may be a hindrance, even if they are trying to help. Neil’s advice here is to take the friend away from the scene a few paces, to ask for details privately. <br><br>Neil says: "We call our course first aid awareness as opposed to first aid itself. I do deliver first aid, if it’s required, but I still do awareness with it." He feels that door staff need to know first aid and awareness. Contingency planning comes into it also. Because it’s one thing if one person is having a seizure; what if a second and a third person drops? Is it a chemical attack? Then you need to evacuate – but what is the steward’s responsibility, and what the control room’s? The communications structure of control room to superviser to steward may alter if the control room has to evacuate. <br><br>What other modules are for the steward? Racism and disability, which Neil describes as a must. It’s not so much a case of what the Acts are, but telling stewards for instance how many wheelchair users there are in the country; how many partially-sighted – and what stewards can do to help such people and others inside the ground. A stadium may already have an area set aside for wheelchair spectators; or induction loops for the hard of hearing. Is it some stewards’ job to bring a disabled person a cup of tea at half-time? to push a wheelchair user to the toilet for the disabled? [Professional Security was a guest of Panasonic in November to see the CCTV installation at the Stade de France in Paris. And yes, even the dressing room used by France in the 1998 World Cup final had a disabled toilet in the gents.] As for racism, while Neil reports that there’s not so much now, there remains a hard core. Most grounds take a no-tolerance approach, and will seek to eject or arrest and ban those shouting racist remarks or making racist chants. <br><br>Another similarity between a stadium and a shopping centre is what you could call the ground rules; if you are in a queue at the turnstiles to get into a game, you may spot the printed ground regulations on a wall. While it’s a rare fan who gives them a glance, let alone a read, that’s what the stewards work to, and what gives the staff from the stadium safety officer down the grounds to tell supporters what they can and cannot do.<br><br>You’re taking pictures with your mobile phone or digital camera? If it’s not for commercial use, you will not pull someone up for a breach of copyright … but you might if someone’s setting up a tripod and filming without permission. Ticket touting? A football ticket can only be resold with permission of the club. So if your son can’t make the big game and you pass his ticket on to your friend, that is touting. But that’s hardly in the same league as a swarm of ticket touts outside a motor racing Grand Prix. Even if such selling is not illegal, might it be enough of a hazard that the road stewards ought to move the touts along? <br><br>And if you’re fancying a fight afterwards and you ring a fellow hooligan in <br>the away stand, to arrange a time and place, you’re falling foul of ground regulations about use of mobile phones. If you refuse to be searched, you are not accepting ground regulations, and you’re not coming in. But that is not the same as saying that a searcher can do whatever he likes. For one thing, only a female should search a female, and a male a male. You have to take particular care with an under-18 (it used to be the under-16s): you should ask the permission of the parent to open pockets or bags. You do not have the right to search a child. It’s similar if a shopping centre wants to ban hooded tops from its premises, if it’s part of the centre rules – as printed on the door or there to view on the website. You can ask someone to remove their hood; if they refuse, they can be refused entry. A search can be confrontational. Here conflict management training comes in. Only with consent, trainers stress. <br><br>In a sports ground as in a shop or shopping mall or elsewhere, the steward or security officer’s work may be customer care and safety one minute and security the next, or those roles may blur into one making any differentiation difficult, or pointless, even. If a fan is trying to get from his seat onto the playing area, because he is overjoyed at a famous victory, it’s the stewards’ job to prevent that, even if the fan only wants to celebrate; that fan might trip and be a danger to himself and others. In that sense it’s no different from if a fan wants to break the ground rules by going onto the pitch, because he’s furious at his players for losing; or the opposition for winning. In Champions League football, at least, a pitch invasion by a single fan can be costly. The European football body Uefa can and does fine clubs – such as Celtic FC, in November 2008 – tens of thousands of pounds for such (highly visible and embarrassing) offences. Punishments available include docking points or ordering European matches to be played behind closed doors (also costly to clubs).<br><br>What the Green Guide says<br><br>First aid and medical provision has a chapter (one of 20) in the new, 2008 edition of the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds. <br><br>The Football Licensing Authority on behalf of the Department for Culture published in June the fifth edition of The Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (better known as the ‘green guide’ because of its cover). The guide free to download at www.culture.gov.uk covers the management, design, scrutiny and certification of sports grounds and is aimed at helping achieve a common goal of safety, comfort and welfare of all spectators at sports grounds at all times and in all situations, including non-sporting events. Green Guide principles are expected to be applied by local authorities and sports grounds management across the board in addressing safety at sports grounds. <br><br>As elsewhere in the guide, the chapter on first aid begins with risk assessment. What’s the layout of the ground and surrounds? (A new edge of town ground with modern stands, and purpose-built roads will have different risks from older sites among terraced streets.) And, again as elsewhere, the Guide stresses record-keeping and briefing, and makes the point that plans must not stand still: &quot;The plan should be reviewed annually or after any significant incident or near miss.&quot;
