In case of an emergency, what is your plan?

Project Summary

The City of Greater Bendigo joined with Victoria Police, Victoria SES, Country Fire Authority, Department Health and Human services and Australian Red Cross to work collaboratively with our community to increase resilience and preparedness when faced with a disaster/hazard. The ‘In an emergency, what’s your plan?’ project aims to simplify and personalise preparedness, therefore increasing capacity for resilience throughout the community.

Background and Situation Context

• Emergency management is evolving and has shifted away from, ‘what are agencies doing for the community’ to a ‘sector-wide approach to achieve joined-up outcomes that are community-focused.’ (Emergency Management Victoria)
• The City of Greater Bendigo (CoGB), Community Resilience Pilot Project supports both a regional city setting and surrounding rural areas, with a particular focus on vulnerable communities/people.
• An identified need to increase community resilience, preparedness and awareness, throughout the community created the initiative to establish the plan.
• Emergency agencies worked collaboratively, focusing on a multi-hazard approach to information sharing and preparedness.
  • Initial objectives were to
    • Increase overall community resilience, by delivering a risk communication strategy tailored to suit target audience
    • Coordinate a tailored public education program delivered in partnership with VicSES, CFA and the Australian Red Cross
    • Reduce inefficiency of current and future public education programs, by achieving cost efficiency in communication

The project supports the entire CoGB community, however significant focus has been placed on members and groups within the community that are often identified as vulnerable, e.g. deaf community, refugee groups, socially and geographically isolated people, the elderly, children and teenagers, people with disabilities, low literacy levels etc. Often traditional messaging and information has not been accessible or understood by these groups, therefore they are more vulnerable in the event of an emergency.

The focus of the project is to develop tools, strategies and easy to access information for these groups which assists them to develop emergency plans and to support themselves, family and community. This was done by utilising known information sources and broadening how information was delivered to these groups – with the ultimate goal of increasing resilience of these community members and developing local leaders to further support the community.

Activities

The project, ‘In case of Emergency, what’s your plan?’ was launched in November 2015, with a TV commercial, radio and social media campaign and a flip chart delivered to every household in the City of Greater Bendigo. This was also supported with media promotion and community education sessions with various organisations and services.

Additionally, in collaboration with Scope, an Easy English version of ‘In an Emergency, what’s your plan?’ was developed to support people with low literacy, intellectual disability, from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) etc. This has been a valuable inclusion to the project and has been widely utilised and valued by the community.

The roll out of community education to build preparedness is ongoing. This involves continually engaging with local communities to ensure the message is reaching the right audiences and to make sure that they understood the message.

The project consisted of various phases

Forum: ‘Building Stronger Communities in the face of disaster’

• Focus: Improve how individuals and the community prepare, respond and cope with natural disaster and emergencies
• Multi-agency and community event, held on June 21st 2014
• Featuring: Craig Lapsley, John Richardson, Mark Squirrell and Dr. Yoko Akama – presenting ‘Playful Triggers’ activity

Engaging with academic institutions, researching aspects of community resilience and engagement

• Household Pets and Community Disaster Resilience, Josh Trigg, Appleton Institute, GQ University
• Community Resilience and Preparedness Survey, Douglas Paton and Katelyn Russiter

Multi-agency working group established, including

• VicSES (State Emergency Services)
• VicPolice
• Red Cross
• Country Fire Authority (CFA)
• Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)
• City of Greater Bendigo (CoGB)

‘In an Emergency, what’s your plan?’ community education tool(s)

• Five key themes developed from working group;
  • Knowledge
  • Have a Plan
  • Connectedness
  • Safety & Wellbeing
  • Information
• Products
  • Flip chart distributed to all CoGB households (via ‘GB’ magazine)
  • TV commercial- Auslan & text included (animation & human component- local Emergency service personnel)
  • Media release & launch by CoGB Mayor & agencies
  • Radio broadcasts (message)
  • Social media
  • Website- linked to the COGB website with all agency information, if community requires specific information
  • Business forum – supporting businesses with preparedness & business continuity planning

Partnerships within community, supporting community

• Neighbourhood & Community houses- training volunteers to work with people to develop plans, support with identify risks etc.
• Schools- education & peer mentoring
• Aged & HACC services
• Bendigo Deaf community & interpreters
• Emergency Service agencies ( community information)
• Linking with refugee communities & interpreters

Results

The outputs listed below were developed in collaboration with all emergency service agencies. Each agency identified five key messages that were important to their organisation. As a working group, five themes were developed – encompassing all the agencies’ key messages (many, which were the same). The challenge was to create something that had not been done before, to be innovative and follow the principles of shared responsibility.
Consultation with community members and potentially vulnerable people was also undertaken. Information on how people like to receive, are able to best comprehend and engage with information was gathered via email, face-to-face, phone conversations, in groups and one-on-one.

From this information, we developed a concept brief for our products: bright, modern, interactive, engaging (wide audience), pictorial, simple language, able to be personalised.

The inclusion of Auslan has been a positive addition into the project. The learning and sharing of information and knowledge over the journey was invaluable. This process has highlighted the importance of engaging and working within communities to ensure that resources are reflective of true community needs.

Working collaboratively was very positive and an efficient use of resources for all agencies and organisations involved. Going back to objectives, looking at the ‘big picture’ and ongoing communication helped overcome challenges.

A continuing challenge within this space will be, challenging traditional thinking and being agile in our thinking.

Outputs

• Flip chart to all CoGB households (via Bendigo Weekly paper)- simple information and simple planning structure included;
• TV commercial- Auslan & text included (animation and human component)
• Media release & launch by CoGB Mayor & agencies
• Radio broadcasts (message)
• Social media
• Website- linked to the COGB website with all agency information, if community requires specific information
• Business forum – supporting businesses with preparedness and continuity planning
• Building Stronger Communities’ in the face of disaster, forum

Evaluation of the project will occur informally throughout the roll out of the project and the working group will come back to reflect on successes, improvements, changes, community feedback etc. As a pilot project the initial plan was a trial within City of Greater Bendigo, however it has the potential to roll out to the broader Loddon Mallee Region in the future.

Reflection

Using the ‘all agencies and all hazards’ approach to develop the Community Resilience Pilot Project helped us step away from the traditional single agency and single incident planning and response method. The project focused on empowering community to take responsibility for preparedness and building individual and community resilience.
The initial stage of this project has been rolled out, however monitoring and evaluation of its effectiveness is still in progress.

Additional Project Details