Providing practical aid

Practical aid

Practical support is a key aspect of initial psychosocial responding, instilling a sense of hope helps restore survivors’ dignity and capacity that they can help themselves. Many survivors will appreciate and cope with a realistic approach that supports them in thinking about how to start addressing their needs one step at a time.

Enabling people to succeed in these efforts and repeatedly so can help restore individuals’ self-belief that they have the necessary personal resources to exercise some control over their environment again, which is a significant aspect of recovery from the impact of a major incident.

Children and young people just like adults also benefit from the opportunity to identify their priorities and to make a plan about how to achieve what they want to do. Children may need support from young people and adults to help them act on this. Wherever possible parents or carers need to be involved in this so they achieve their own success.

There are four key steps in offering practical assistance

Step 1: To focus on identifying the immediate needs and to address these one at a time, some matters will be easier to address than others, getting something to eat may be relatively straight forward whereas filling an insurance claim may be far more difficult.

Step 2: Clarifying with survivors what their needs are so they are clear about what practical steps need to be undertaken to address these needs makes this process easier.

Step 3: Agree an action plan for this to be effective. Responders need to be knowledgeable about what services and support is available so they can direct survivors to appropriate sources of assistance. These may include survivors being involved in any volunteer efforts on behalf of others affected by the incident.

Step 4: To aid survivors in taking action to help them realise their goals.