Emergency Ambulance Employee Safety and Preparedness Act
2019-2020 Legislative Session
Author by Assemblymember Grayson
Summary: Would, until January 1, 2025, create the Firefighter Peer Support and Crisis Referral Services Pilot Program. The bill would, for purposes of the act, define a “peer support team” as a team composed of emergency service personnel, as defined, hospital staff, clergy, and educators who have been appointed to the team by a Peer Support Labor-Management Committee, as defined, and who have completed a peer support training course developed and delivered by the California Firefighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee, as specified.
CRPA Position: The CRPA fundamentally supports the creation, development, and refinement of peer support programming that better meets the needs of first responders including EMS providers. This bill is a step in the right direction, however it only supports public safety firefighters and does currently include Paramedics and EMTs serving in private corporations. The vast majority of incidents responded to by Firefighters are EMS-centric, as such it is important to realize that other first responders involved in EMS may too be suffering without support.