DIAL-A-COMMUNITY BUS
NEWS
2007
Press Release;
Tuesday 8th May 2007
Grampian Police Cadets presentation
Buchan Dial-a-Community Bus (DACB) presented
Grampian Police’s cadets with certificates of vocational
training, at DACB’s Maud premises today.
In early January, prior to the first cadet
starting their community placement at Dial-a-Community Bus,
all of the Grampian Police cadets had 3 days of training, which
included MiDAS for cars and MPV training, Passenger Assistance
Training and Minibus Emergency Evacuation Procedures.
DACB Manager Rachel Milne (pictured
second from the right) said;
“All of the training courses are nationally accredited
qualifications and every cadet completed the course and received
a certificate in each discipline. We are very pleased with the
way the cadets have worked with DACB and it’s great to
be able to publicly acknowledge their hard work and achievements.”
The presentation took place at the transport
charity’s new premises at the Maud Mart’s Community
Services building with the certificates being presented by Peterhead
based Superintendent Bill Archibald. Supt Archibald said "
having been a cadet myself some 28 years ago, I am delighted
to see the 15 current cadets achieve this award. It is equally
pleasing to see that these young people, and potential Police
Officers of the future, have provided support to this valuable
community resource and been so well received by the clients
of DACB".
The Grampian Police cadets, all aged between
16 and 18, have been working alongside the Dial-a-Community
Bus staff on the transport services since January as part of
their Developing Community Citizenship qualification.
Rachel is very pleased to have the cadets on
board;
“Having the cadets with us helps a great deal because
we rely heavily on volunteer aid on all the services, In turn
we feel that interacting with a wide variety of clientele allows
the cadets to learn and enhance their relationship with the
local community, a skill that they will need in their future
profession.”
There have always been good partnership links
between Grampian Police and Buchan Dial-a-Community Bus, and
the community placements of new cadets from Grampian Police
with the transport charity have built on the strong ties between
both organisations.
Grampian Police and Buchan Dial-a-Community
Bus have a long history of partnership work; volunteer off duty
police officers were the original bus drivers for the DACB project
in the 1990’s and many still drive for the project’s
community group use service as and when they can. As the charity
has grown, the links with Grampian Police have increased with
DACB receiving a lot of help from the Force’s Road Safety
Unit and the Mintlaw police office as well as many other departments.
Rachel is hoping that this link will get stronger
with the cadets coming to work with the charity;
“We feel strongly that by providing the training for all
the cadets as well as the community placements for those who
will work with us, we are able to give something back to Grampian
Police.
We are very grateful to all that every police
officer who works with us does; we could not run the services
we do in the professional way that we do, without their help.
So it’s lovely that we can return the favour on occasion.
However we are also getting a lot out of this particular partnership.
The young people are enthused and committed to working with
DACB and they are being encouraged to share their ideas and
thoughts about the services with us.”
