St John Ambulance Canterbury Christ Church LINKS

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Message from the Chair

Hi everybody, and welcome to Canterbury Christ Church LINKS.

LINKS is the solely-for-students section of the St John Ambulance organisation, an international charity whose purpose (in the UK at least) is to provide first aid training to as many people as possible, and secondly to provide first aid, via those who have been trained, or those who volunteer with us, to members of the public. LINKS is a unique opportunity for students at universities throughout England to learn first aid and life saving skills together with fellow, like-minded students, and, if they want to, get a chance to use these and more skills out in the community from programmes such as Community First Responder (joint with St John, Red Cross, and the NHS), to St John First Responder, Advanced First Aiders, Defibrillator trained First Aiders, and ultimately Emergency Ambulance Attendant (a St John, sub-Paramedic qualification). All this, and to get to know loads of new people and have a (in my experience) great social life with them all too!

Christ Church LINKS aims to train students from scratch in the very basics in first aid to the levels of care found by experienced Healthcare Professionals in hospitals and on emergency transport vehicles. As Chair of CCU LINKS it's my goal to teach every member things like the Recovery Position, CPR, wound/fracture management, care of the critically ill patient, what-to-do in an emergency, how to handle a major incident scenario, and let them have access to professionals in the healthcare environment such as paramedics, air-ambulance operators, doctors, etc.. Members of CCU LINKS would then be able to use their training either whenever it was needed, when they're in public, or at the events we provide first aid cover for, which include national/county-wide events such as football matches (incl. Gillingham), cricket (incl. Kent at Canterbury), motor racing (incl. Brands Hatch), Concerts (incl. Zoo8, V-Festival), athletics (incl. the London Marathon), tennis (Wimbledon, etc.), and so on. A great chance for students to both go out and see those events for themselves, and gain valuable interpersonal and patient care skills in doing so.

Finally, a few facts about St John:

• SJA has over 45,000 volunteers
• SJA is a leading youth organisation - over half its volunteers are under 25
• SJA volunteers give over 14,000 hours of service every day - over five million hours each year
• SJA is part of the Order of St John with nearly 300,000 members worldwide
• SJA offers volunteers interesting and challenging opportunities to serve the community
• SJA has a strong local focus and enables people to engage with their local community