Picking your search exercise’s SCENARIO

One of the other things that often let’s down ALSAR search exercises is their scenarios. This is despite the fact that many search exercise planners and training officers spend a large amount of time coming up with these fantastic scenarios [or more accurately because they do!]

Classic examples of this include some probationary ALSAR Units’ assessment exercises such as the man who abducted his two children and is now deemed suicidal. Probably thought up to give a definate IPP and three mispers to find, the scenario is unrealistic. How often does your Unit get these calls? Does your local police really believe you are an appropriate resource to use for locating abducted children anyway? [Personally I'd have failed the Unit for not thinking about or mentioning this during the briefing - but I suppose if you are set this for your assessment, with police and assessors looking on you are stuck with it!]

So what scenario should you use? Guess what, you need to train for what we do. So go back to your Unit’s callout stats – find out what you are generally used for and start thinking about that as a scenario. Over two thirds of ALSAR callouts are for mispers with Dementia and Despondents. So over two thirds of your search training scenarios should be for these – unless your local stats tell you something different. This might happen; a coastal Unit may be called for missing children on holiday more – I don’t know, your Unit should!

Once you have your misper type, you then need to turn to your misper stats. Get out your well-thumbed copy of Koester’s Lost Person Behavior and find out what this type of misper does. How far they travel? Where they are found? How far from the track? In what sorts of environment and position?

This should form the basis of your planning for where the misper will be during the exercise. Whilst it is tempting to position the misper to be found at the “right” time when the exercise should end, try to avoid this – it will skew searchers expectations of where missing persons are found. Rather select an appropriate location according to the stats – 30% of the time in your exercises they will be close in and found quickly for instance [or hopefully they will], 20% of the time they will be found by R&P outside the hub and so on.

You can always plan an extra activity to follow the exercise if it finishes too early. However, most ALSAR Units do not leave enough time to properly de-brief and feedback following exercises anyway. UKLSI allows one and an half to two hours to de-brief the Team Leaders after their assessment exercise which last three hours – this is on top of their assessment feedback; just time for them to share what they have learnt from the exercise. This gives you an idea of how much can be learnt from this process and how little it is done after Unit exercises.

So pick your scenarios with care and attention to detail. They can make or break the exercise and its benefits to your Unit.

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