Resilience to the impacts of emergencies and disasters starts with local capability. Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) responders can now be globally certified.
The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program is a US developed, locally implemented initiative that teaches people how to better prepare themselves for hazards that may affect their communities. Since 1993, the US CERT programme has trained the public in basic disaster response skills such as team organization, disaster medical operations, fire safety, and light search and rescue. The ability for CERT volunteers to perform these activities frees up professional responders to focus their efforts on more complex, essential, and critical tasks.
The US has a credentialling programme for CERT, however this is is not accessible outside the US. With the CERT programme having such excellent and freely available training resources, IPSQA has developed an end-point assessment that compliments existing CERT training materials, enabling a global recognition and promotion of the CERT concept.
IPSQA’s certification CorePass® Community Emergency Response (CERT) provides summative assessment of candidates who have demonstrated the skills and knowledge requirements of the US CERT training syllabus. Our certification also allows the candidate’s name to be presented in their own language, using unicode text. IPSQA does not certify CERT training, but does provide a global quality assured record the candidate has performed the requirements laid out in the our codified syllabus that is aligned with the FEMA CERT course outlines.
Whether used as a stand-alone assessment, or the assessment is integrated within a training programme, a summative assessment is performed by a designated IPSQA Assessor who will test the candidate against a range of skills and knowledge requirements including:
- Carrying out disaster reconnaissance
- CERT organization
- Treating disaster casualties
- Fire suppression using extinguishers
- Basic lifting and cribbing to extricate disaster victims
- Disaster Simulation
Our CorePass® scheme is different from our other certifications (such as CertPubS®, DefraQual®, ProQual, WorkQual etc), as it does not use the ISO17024:2012 standard. This means the assessor can also be the candidate’s instructor and a lighter level of quality assurance applies. Assessment is still robust with the Accredited Testing Provider still required to ensure assessment tools used are compliant and that evidence is retained for external audit and moderation.
For candidates seeking certification for related rescue disciplines, IPSQA offers a range of other certification products including:
- IPSQA CorePass® INSARAG First Responder
- IPSQA CorePass® First Aid I-IV (Basic to Advanced)
- IPSQA CorePass® Fire Suppression I
- IPSQA Certificate in Public Safety (USAR Light Technician)
- IPSQA Certificate in Public Safety (USAR Medium Technician)
- IPSQA Certificate in Public Safety (USAR Heavy Technician)
- IPSQA ProQual: NFPA 1006 – Structural Collapse (Operator & Technician)
- IPSQA ProQual: NFPA 1006 – Confined Space Rescue (Operator & Technician)
Candidates must demonstrate skills consistently with approved references such as the FEMA CERT training materials.
Contact us or your local Accredited Testing Centre for further information.
Become an Accredited Testing Centre.