Support in the community
Helping communities to help themselves is key to harnessing individual and collective abilities to cope with the impact of a major incident.
The following five points can be applied to promote increased community resilience.
- What works for organisations in building resilience can also work for communities. This means access to existing organisational resources can be used to increase community resilience, including that of volunteers and helpers who may be at most risk of an adverse impact longer term.
- Proactively identifying the needs of the communities, any risks or particular needs, means plans can be tailored increasing the effectiveness of the response. For example, identifying community leaders within ethnic communities who have access to informal communication networks, so people are better informed about what is being done to help them.
- Ensuring the organisational and community plans are compatible through shared understanding and agreement about resources, risk, needs and priorities.
- Organisational plans need to reflect how communities are communicated with, engaged and empowered so they are clear about what is expected of them in any event. For example, involving communities with any pre incident preparedness planning and identifying key people to take part in any training events.
- Ensuring communities play an active part in the review of the plans, in the event of an incident is also essential. This needs to take into account the impact of any proposed actions for the community concerned.
For more information about how to improve resilience within the community, there is this government guidance – Community Development Resilience Framework (gov.uk) (opens in a new tab)
For individuals within organisations and communities it is essential that they have established sources of social support as these significantly promote resilience.
Brooks et. al. (2016) makes us aware that in emergency responder organisations, good relationships with colleagues are a protective factor increasing individual resilience, job satisfaction and helping sustain emotional wellbeing. Organisations which ensure staff are clear about their roles and responsibilities also increase the effectiveness of their teams. As a result of the informal support from colleagues and supervising staff the organisations formal support systems are also enhanced.
As responder organisations and volunteers within the community in particular are exposed to increased levels of trauma this places them at increased risk of being traumatised. This phenomena is known as secondary or vicarious trauma. Increased social support at work and in the community can also help reduce the likelihood of this.