Many fire professionals believe that fire-safety education can reduce the recidivism rate among juvenile firesetters.
Thrillseeker arsonists are those archetypal fire-setter figures who stay around in the crowd to watch what happens.
In Kent, as in similar schemes elsewhere, advisers encourage young fire-setters to talk, to open up.
Juvenile firesetters also have been found to view themselves as loners.
The firesetter dwells on his invulnerability and justifications even after the fire is over.
He is improving assessment tools that identify fire-setters as well as developing information packets.
Firesetters often strive to cover their tracks, but the specialist police dog will make life very difficult for them in future.
Many firesetters have poor academic achievements, which is more related to a generalised set of behaviour problems.
If a child is identified as a pathological fire-setter, he or she receives free behavioral health-care treatment.
A firesetter may have multiple motives.
The family environment of the childhood firesetter is likely to be chaotic.
Mental health professionals are accustomed to working independently, but it is imperative that a relationship be maintained with the fire and police departments when treating juvenile firesetters.
Throughout the country, fire and rescue services run proactive educational schemes about fire and its dangers, as well as programmes in which individual fire-setters are dealt with on a one-to-one basis.
Firesetters experience significantly more emotional neglect and physical abuse than do other children of similar socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds.
Some severely disturbed firesetters engage in self-harm.
The young fire-setters are asked why and how often they lit fires and what they thought they were going to get out of it.
Research has indicated that firesetters tend to exhibit conduct problems, such as disobedience and aggressiveness.
Children who are deemed curiosity fire-setters tend to have a single incident of fire-play and often require just fire-safety education.
To gauge whether a fire-setter's behavior is pathological, environmental or, more simply, derived from curiosity, firefighters often use psychologist-developed assessment questionnaires.
The number of adolescent firesetters has been growing each year, along with the psychological and financial damage they create.