In June, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed a bill requiring that 911 dispatchers and call-takers in the state participate in 232 hours of classroom instruction to become certified to answer calls in public safety answering points (PSAPs). Previously the certification was voluntary and required 208 hours of training.
The legislation was prompted by the kidnapping and murder of Denise Amber Lee in 2008, during which Lee and several witnesses made 911 calls that call-takers and dispatchers mishandled, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
A January 2010 study by the Florida Legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability (OPPAGA) found that PSAPs provided 104 to 135 hours on average of formal classroom training compared to more than 400 hours on average of on-the-job training.
The legislation requires the Department of Health to certify PSAPs’ training programs as meeting Department of Education standards for call-taker training curriculum, and for all call-takers and dispatchers to take the training within one year of being employed under a trained supervisor. Those who complete the course will then be given an examination before they are certified. Certification may be renewed by completing 20 hours of training every two years.
Existing call-takers and dispatchers who have been employed in a supervised, full-time position for three years since 2002 may be able to test out of the initial training requirement by passing an examination administered by the Department of Health.
That last provision was important to Ruthie Doles, 911 Communications Center manager for Pinellas County, Fla., Public Safety Services. “That cost could have been extensive if we had to take people off the floor to send them through the training class after they’ve been doing the job for years,” she said.
Doles said the current class of the county’s PSAP trainees is going through an approved curriculum based on components certified by a national organization. “A lot of the components that we needed to fill in are a part of an emergency telecommunicators certification program that’s certified by the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch,” she said.
Spokeswomen for the Department of Management Services and the Department of Health were not aware of Florida’s standards or legislation being modeled after any others.
E911 Funds for Training
The new law also allows for money from the Emergency Communications Number E911 System Fund be used for call-taker and dispatcher training. According to the OPPAGA study, the E911 Board projected the E911 Trust Fund would have $11 million in it in June 2010. The board likes to maintain the fund’s balance at $8 million to $10 million.
PSAPs in Palm Beach County, Fla., range in size from one position and a backup station to call centers with 27 positions. Prior to passage of the bill, SB 742, some call centers just required a few courses on how to use the equipment and communicate with deaf or hearing-impaired callers, and then were assigned to work under a supervisor for a period of time. “[In] some agencies, especially the larger ones, people spent months before they even saw the business end of a telephone,” said Mark Adler, the county’s 911 Communications director.
Adler said the biggest burden in terms of cost comes when a PSAP needs to take someone away from the phone for training. “Now I’ve got to pay somebody to be out training while I’m also paying somebody to sit in the chair and answer the calls,” he said. “So in that sense it’s unfunded because a lot of agencies don’t have, and the 911 system doesn’t have enough, to say ‘OK, well you were in training so we’re going to pay your full salary for those eight hours.’”
Training for call-taking and dispatcher personnel will likely take place through a cooperative effort among the PSAPs in Palm Beach County coordinated through a training committee, Adler said. “We’re going to do a workshop in September and from there on determine what path we can take to enable all the agencies to get the certification they need out of this pool,” he said. “It will probably work something along the line of ‘OK, Mark does the TDD [telecommunications device for the deaf] class. Well here’s his resume and his class outline, and then that’s put into the certification package and the city or the municipality will get that certified as their individual program.”
Training also could be provided through the local state college.
