On Thursday 11th April, our Health & Social Care department were lucky enough to welcome back the Great Western Air Ambulance team, consisting of Steve Mould, Kate Groves, Forrest Wheeler, and Katie Harrison to complete a 'heart starters' session with our Year 10 Health & Social Care students.

The programme aims to create a generation of lifesavers in our region by teaching lifesaving skills and CPR. The students learnt about the air ambulance charity and what an important impact their service has on saving lives. One of the volunteers even shared their own experience of when their heart stopped whilst out running in Cheltenham, highlighting the importance of learning how to deliver CPR.

50 students worked to complete a series of training activities, all the students got involved and all had the chance to put people in the recovery position and use the resuscitation dummies to perform chest compressions, as well as being able to practice using a defibrillator using a realistic AED model.

We are immensely proud of our Health & Social Care students for the enthusiasm and the maturity in which they conducted themselves and are grateful for the air ambulance volunteers giving up their time to deliver this fantastic session with our students.