ALFRED — Sometimes, children display curiosity  or fascination about fire. A parent may discover their  child has already gathered materials with which to start a fire. Sometimes, they’ll start one.

It can be a very scary time, for everyone involved.

But those sorts of scenarios can be avoided, with intervention. 

A  free program called the York County Juvenile Fire Safety and Intervention Collaborative, established in the late 1990s, can help. Under the helm of the York County Emergency Management Agency,  Molly Cunningham and Matt Leach both work to educate children about fire and educate parents on how they can take steps to make the tools of fire-setting less available and less attractive.

The program is designed for children showing a curiosity or fascination with fire  — not only those who have had a fire incident.

So far,  27 children have been  enrolled in the program this calendar year.

Kids can be referred by parents or through their local fire or police departments. The program is voluntary in those instances.

Once a referral is made, Leach or Cunningham meet with the family, complete  an assessment, and based on the finding either refer the youngster to social service agencies conduct fire safety education. Sometimes,  they do both.

Kids can be referred to case management, counseling, or positive community programs, like scouting, they said.

The educational piece covers how a fire behaves, fire prevention, burns, decision-making and more. 

“We talk about the effects of fire, and how it changes a life,” said Leach. For the younger child enrolled, sometimes the talk could include the inability of a child to ride a bicycle or   take part in some other fun activity  if he or she were to sustain a burn. 

For older kids, especially 10 to 14 year-olds, the talk is about making decisions — and being able to say ‘no’ to your peers.  Leach and Cunningham create scenarios, where kids must make a choice. 

There are also scenarios about what future doors might be closed to someone if  they were to be convicted of a crime —  designed to make the child think.

Sometimes, a referral is ordered by the courts —  youngsters are referred through the juvenile justice system after they’ve been charged with a crime and a disposition rendered, said Leach. 

Both Leach and Cunningham work part time with the collaborative. Both also have full-time jobs – Cunningham is a social worker, Leach is a career firefighter-paramedic with Biddeford Fire Department

According to Leach, in, there are four major reasons why young people start fires — curiosity, anger, peer pressure and boredom.  Social media can play a role as well, he said. 

“There are a lot of myths about fire-setting,” said Cunningham. There’s a myth, she said, that every child who sets a fire is a pyromaniac or arsonist.

Nationally, Leach and Cunningham say, more than half of all intentionally set fires are started by youth under the age of 18. When a child or adolescent sets a fire and receives no intervention, there is greater than 50 percent  chance he or she will set a second fire. Once a second fire is set, the chances are better than 80 percent  that the fire-setting behavior will continue.

Parents can take some steps that can help — like removing matches and lighters from plain view and locking them away, Leach said. 

“Kids learn from their parents, “ he said, pointing for the need for parents to display  proper fire safety.

“We need parents to safety-check what their child is looking at,” said Cunningham, referring to the social media piece.

Part of the program includes a responsibility contract, where a child agrees to be checked for matches and lighters. It gives parents the role of checking  their children’s backpacks — a task that is not always comfortable.

And there are the hard questions — the hard conversations.

“We allow those conversations here,”  said Cunningham. “(We talk about) what choice they could have made; who they have impacted. Some tell us the program has really opened communication.”

For more information about the program, call the York County Juvenile Fire Safety and Intervention Collaborative at 459-2463.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford)or 282-1535, ext. 327 or [email protected].