Ready2Go Disaster Resilience Program

Project Summary

A community-led resilience program, Ready2Go supports people living independently and who are unable to safeguard adequately against the effects of extreme heat and other extreme weather events. The program matches vulnerable residents with volunteer community members who provide information, support and early relocation, away from high-risk areas to safer environments when the need arises.

Background and Situation Context

The Ready2Go program was born out of a recognised need to assist vulnerable people during heatwaves and prior to other extreme weather events such as storms and bushfire danger days. The community of Cockatoo identified this need after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires and the preceding heatwave. We know now 374 people died from preventable heat-related illness in the two weeks prior to 7 Feb 2009.

The program provides a valuable outlet to assist vulnerable residents to build friendships, become more connected to their community and other support services, while ensuring they are safe during high-risk conditions.

This program aims to

1. Increase social connections thereby strengthening individuals’ capacity for independent living
2. Reduce the potentially fatal impact of heatwaves by providing strategies to reduce the impacts. This may include a means of transportation and early relocation for those who are isolated at home without a car
3. Prevent loss of life during periods of predicted or forecast, storm and bushfire danger days by assisting participants to develop their personal risk plan which may include transport, support to prepare for being away from home and ongoing contact to ensure they are coping well.

Activities

Members of the Cockatoo community, who held concerns for the welfare of vulnerable residents during emergencies, highlighted the need for the program. On two occasions at Cockatoo Township Committee meetings people raised the issue of knowing someone who could not leave Cockatoo in the event of high fire danger.

An initial community survey in early 2012 identified the perceptions and practices of households around extreme event planning and action. Results indicated strong community support for a local response to helping neighbours during extreme events of heat, fire and storm.

In addition to the 20 volunteers, who responded to the community survey, a formal recruitment drive for both volunteer drivers and participants needing assistance to relocate was undertaken. The volunteers are community members who by their very involvement encourage others to consider their community through fresh eyes.

The Ready2Go program began as a pilot project in 2013 co-managed by Monash Health. Following the success of the pilot, an improved program was established following significant evaluation and consolidation between November 2015 and July 2016.

Launched in July 2016, the Ready2Go Community Manual and program received further funding to expand across ten further communities in Victoria.

Results

We found that supporting vulnerable people to remain living within their communities and helping those people to have strong social connections could be an important part of improving health outcomes and becoming more resilient.

Understanding how the program influences both participants’ and volunteers’ decision making gave a more detailed understanding of the mutual benefits the program provided and the potential of the program to provide a community-driven conduit for stronger community safety education outcomes.

Both participants and volunteers described their involvement in the program being an important outlet to access emergency planning support for bushfire dangers and heat health. This highlights how the broader benefits of the program contribute to residents’ ability and motivation to better prepare for emergencies and support residents to understand their local risks.

During follow-up discussions after the formal debrief, one participant noted that having assistance to undertake pre-season planning helped him to ‘own his truth’ and acknowledge both his local risks and at times his own limitations. The aspects of the Ready2Go program, which participants felt were most useful to them, included relocation support for bushfire safety, heatwave relocation and access to other support services. The strongest response from participants was in relation to the value of the Ready2Go program giving them regular contact with other community members.

Importantly, the Ready2Go program is not immune to some of the same difficulties faced by Governments, Emergency Services and Relief/Recovery Agencies. These challenges include:

1. Overcoming ‘warnings fatigue’ during extended extreme weather conditions
2. Overcoming broader societal disaster complacency
3. Conflicting state-wide safety messages across multiple hazards

Participants face a difficult and complex decision-making process to navigate the variation between formal Health messages of ‘staying home in a cool environment during heat health events’ which conflicts with the Fire agencies ‘leave early’ message for Bushfire prone areas.

For some more vulnerable residents, neither of these formal messages considers socio-economic limitations such as costs of air conditioning relocation costs etc. The Ready2Go Program seeks to overcome such limitations, and to add value and a local context to wider safety messaging without contributing to information overload for communities.

The breadth of partner organisations involved in Ready2Go program ensured we addressed the many barriers to participation that vulnerable people can experience in the lead up to high-risk conditions. The challenges Ready2Go has addressed for vulnerable residents include managing participants’ pets, providing secure volunteer support and having meaningful assistance to overcome bushfire safety planning issues such as illiteracy, limited access to technology and poor medical planning support.

In December 2017, the Ready2Go program was successful in securing funding to expand the Ready2Go Program across Victoria. The Gandel Philanthropy and Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation through the Eldon and Anne Foote Trust jointly funded the statewide project. In cooperation with Emergency Management Victoria, we plan to expand the successful and multi award winning grassroots Ready2Go program to a further ten communities (five rural and five urban communities) over the next two years.

What knowledge or product outcomes did the project accomplish?

Specific Benefits

1. Mitigating the risks of fatalities/injuries/illness associated with extreme heat and bushfire dangers by providing relocation support and generating greater confidence.
2. Increasing heat health and bushfire awareness by providing planning assistance through pre-season training for both volunteers and participants. People prepare better for extreme events.
3. Reducing social isolation by providing regular social and training events. Forming relationships and strong bonds.
4. Increasing social connectedness by enabling stronger relationships through the considered matching of volunteers and participants.
5. Supporting independent living by linking participants with medical and support services and by providing a conduit for access to emergency information, which was otherwise people could not access. This is vital for a healthy functioning society.
6. Building Skills and Knowledge through the provision of emergency and first aid training available for both volunteers and participants. These skills play over into many other areas of community living.

Evidence of these benefits gathered through yearly post-season debriefing events where volunteer and participant document feedback and through end of pilot phase evaluation conducted in 2014 and a whole of program review conducted in 2016 all serve to improve the program.

The pilot phase evaluation conducted in 2014 examined the first year of the program and considered aspects such as volunteer retention, participants perceptions of program benefits, community engagement and areas for future improvement.

The program review conducted in 2016 examined broader details and gathered a better understanding of the

• wider benefits of the program,
• influence of formal warnings information on vulnerable persons decision making,
• relevant meteorological data,
• ratio of relocation to trigger events,
• number of volunteers and participants over the lifetime of the program,
• overall costs of the program, and
• key learnings gathered from the steering committee.

This evidence informed the developments of the Ready2Go community Manual and revised editions of the Read2yGo Volunteer and Participant Manuals.

Awards

• Resilient Australia Awards – Highly commended 2016
• Fire Awareness Awards – Access & Inclusion Category - Winner 2016
• Fire Awareness Awards – State Excellence Award 2016

Reflection

Ready2Go Cockatoo presents as a unique community-led development model, which combines the ability to address the significant risks for vulnerable people in emergencies with the opportunity to support wider community development benefits throughout the year.

This innovative approach alleviates the burden on traditional support systems such as emergency and health services to respond to vulnerable people’s needs before, during and after high-risk conditions in high risk areas. Ready2Go prepares and helps people plan how best to remain and feel confident in their community and thus results in encouraging greater independence.

The carefully designed relocation function of the Ready2Go Program self-activates and does not rely on day-to-day paid positions to remain sustainable, that is, not relying on traditional emergency services or funded support.

Critical Success factors

1. Instigated with strong community and health sector involvement from the beginning
2. Ready2Go does not depend on a traditional service delivery model and continues to empower both participants and volunteers
3. Ready2Go places emphasis and value on social connectedness and social cohesion as well emergency preparedness.

Barriers and Solutions

1. We do observe some cultural influences over the reality of heat health being the cause of more fatalities than bushfire or storms. Embedded within the Australian psyche sits a belief, indeed a ‘badge of honour’ that as a nation we have acclimatised to extreme heat. We believe that collectively, across the community safety sector, we do need to work on raising awareness of the breadth of ‘at risk cohorts’ who are vulnerable to heat health risks.
2. Ready2Go accommodates both heat health and strategies for bushfire risk prevention but current formal safety messaging for these risks can be contradictory around staying home and/or leaving high-risk areas early. This can add additional complexity to decision making processes for many of our more vulnerable residents.

To date the above barriers to success and participation remain a challenge and one is not exclusive to the Ready2Go program.

Additional Project Details