Tom Andross and Cecily McNair

Improving professionalism among dispatchers is the No. 1 goal for members of the New Hampshire Emergency Dispatcher’s Association (NHEDA), according to long-time member Cecily McNair. “We’re a group of dedicated people who want to improve this profession and are capable of doing the job,” says McNair, communications center supervisor at Merrimack County Sheriff’s Office. “We want to leave this job better than we found it.”

Having its roots in the mid-1980s, and formally associating in 1990, NHEDA initially focused on providing free or low-cost, high quality training to agencies who couldn’t otherwise acquire it. Before NHEDA, New Hampshire dispatchers relied on APCO International or the Atlantic Chapter for 9-1-1 related training and networking opportunities.

Tom Andross, the director of communications at Grafton County Sheriff’s Office, has been a NHEDA member since the association organized in 1990. “We didn’t have any other association locally. This is our only statewide dispatch organization,” he says, “and being able to meet and work with other people from our profession is so valuable.”

In the beginning, the group met monthly, with 10–15 core members receiving training and having a business meeting. Over the years, membership and attendance at monthly training courses and meetings grew. For the past four years, NHEDA has held an annual statewide conference, and this spring 140 dispatch professionals attended.

Current President Cassandra Smith joined NHEDA in 2009, first attending the training courses then staying for the business meetings. With little more than two years on the job in public safety, along with five years of experience as a transportation dispatcher at the University of New Hampshire, Smith was NHEDA’s target audience. “Providing quality training for free or very little cost can be huge, especially since we have so many tiny agencies with four or five full-time dispatchers,” Andross says.

Smith works in a frontline dispatch position as a fire alarm operator, dispatching firefighters and EMTs at Hampton Fire Rescue. After being a member of the association for a few years, and upon receiving encouragement from more experienced members, she took the position as president. “The board has a lot of experience, with communications supervisors and directors,” Smith says. “It can be a little intimidating, but I bring a unique perspective to the discussion from the frontline dispatcher doing the job every day.”

The previous association president focused on driving up membership and earning a seat on the state’s E9-1-1 Commission. Under his direction, NHEDA achieved both goals.

Now Smith is leading the group with a new focus—to increase training certifications and performance standards for telecommunicators. “Our certifications and standards committee recently drafted a document outlining improvements to state certifications and standards, which is important to developing a universal measurement to compare everyone,” Smith says. “Our goal is to create a statewide standard.”

She knows that’s a tall order. Currently, all NHEDA members are volunteers and implementing statewide changes will require buy-in from each agency, public education to get everyone on board and money to administer the training and tests. Initially, agencies will volunteer to submit to the standards and apply them, which isn’t a foreign concept in the state.

The communications center in Strafford County Sheriff’s Office, in Dover, N.H., is CALEA-accredited, which is a voluntary certification mandating standards measured by national best-practices. “Our piece of public safety is the last piece that doesn’t have a statewide, funded training academy or nationally-mandated standards,” Andross says. “If we can guide dispatch centers through this process, we can prove to legislators and skeptics that this is something we can, something we should do.”

“NHEDA is a great organization— – grass roots, all volunteers,” Smith says. “We truly believe this is not a job, it’s a calling, a profession, a career.”

About the Author
Stephen Martini serves on the training and quality assurance staff at the Hamilton County 9-1-1 District, where he’s worked since 2004. Before joining public safety, Martini was a newspaper journalist in North Carolina and Tennessee. Contact him via e-mail at [email protected].

Also see Telecommunicator Spotlight, June 2013, Public Safety Communications.