Interview with Dawn Mainprize, Cliff Technician

How many generations of the family have been coastguards or are coastguards?

My husband joined first and then my son joined when he passed his driving test because you’ve got to be able to drive. Then I joined and then my daughter got a job in the Operations Room. So when we get paged, we can all just leave together, we just put our knives and forks down and we’re gone!

How do you feel about being a coastguard and your family being part of this other family?

Quite proud. We do put a lot of time in and we get to spend time together as a family, actually on jobs and training, so it works out quite well really. 

What do you do outside of being a coastguard?

I work for Scarborough Hospital as a healthcare assistant on maternity. We do tend to get involved in deliveries and when they go a little bit wrong we get involved as well. So it works out quite well really, we’ve all got different skills and then it all comes together really.

How do your employers feel about you being a volunteer?

They are quite good where sometimes they give me my training days off. Because we work as a volunteer they’re there to support us in our roles. 

We've got the ability to sign on and off the system (as a coastguard volunteer?), so when I’m at work I’ll sign off in the morning and when I’m leaving the ward I’ll sign back on again. So I don’t attend during the day. 

What made you want to join?

I think it's just giving a bit back to the community where we live. It’s a hobby and we all really enjoy it. We [the team] work really well, we’ve all got different jobs and it just works. We do lots of training together, spend lots of time together and it works really well.