Emergency services personnel experience both operational and organisational stressors. While formal and informal workplace supports exist, these are not always accessible or suitable for all, and research suggests that emergency services personnel lean on their families and friends for emotional support. Traditionally, this supportive role has been perceived as a burden to families and friends, with caution advised regarding vicarious/secondary trauma. Gaps in the literature include if and how these non-emergency services family/friend supporters are trained to provide this help and what support systems are available to them?

Funded by Movember’s Veteran and First Responder grant, the HUGS@Home programme aimed to address this issue by co-designing, implementing and evaluating a simulation-enhanced psychological first aid training (PFA) programme. Participants learned how to

1. identify stress in their loved one and
2. begin an early, supportive conversation using three simple PFA principles: Look, Listen and Link.

Using a mixed methods, participatory action research approach, we implemented 10 iterations of training, impacting approximately 80 families/friends. We collected survey and interview/focus group data from both family members/friends and their corresponding first responders in Ireland and UK, at three time points. Analysis included descriptive statistics and reflexive thematic analysis.

Results indicate that the HUGS@Home programme made a positive impact on participants' resilience, post-traumatic growth, overall quality of life and perceived social support, with significant others cited as the strongest source of social support. Participants report using the training in their everyday lives, not just for emergency work related stressors, with 95% suggesting they would recommend this training to a friend.

In conclusion, we know that training families and friends benefits the overall wellbeing of emergency services families. We urge organisations to consider the role that families play in maintaining the wellbeing of emergency services personnel and to offer the required training and support for all.

Presentation Key Learnings:
1. Nothing about us, without us. Co-design was crucial to success of HUGS@Home. Including all the voices that matter in developing this programme ensured that pragmatic problems were addressed and creative solutions were identified.

2. Engaging volunteer first responders as peers/friends has been powerful. We discovered that volunteers really need this programme too.Their sense of camaraderie and community spirit made them ideal participants and champions of this training.

3. Dissemination drives interest and attracts other potential collaborators. Following connections made at a speaker engagement at a national conference, we delivered HUGS@Home in 5 Irish counties and 1 UK service.