People living with existing risk factors tend to be the hardest hit by emergencies and take the longest to recover after the event. These groups often have existing relationships with community services providers, so your service is well placed to share information and advocate for emergency preparedness for your clients.
Community service providers play an important role in disaster resilience as they are a continuous presence in communities. They have a deeper understanding of the needs and strengths of a community and are well positioned to educate and advocate for emergency preparedness as well as supporting communities in long term recovery initiatives.
Below you will find links to a range of resources that can assist you in planning your agency’s approach to supporting clients before, during and after emergencies, disasters and extreme weather events and useful resources to support you in this work.
Plan your approach to managing emergencies, disasters and extreme weather events
These planning tools enable you to consider what roles you currently play before, during or after significant weather events or disasters and what possible roles you would like to play in the future.
- Emergency management roles for providers of accommodation and housing support
- Emergency management roles for providers of homecare or outreach services
- Emergency management roles for providers of centre-based services
Guidelines for responding to collective trauma events
Guidelines developed by Australian Red Cross for supporting communities before, during and after collective trauma events are available here.
Person-centred emergency preparedness toolkit
A Process Tool and Framework for Enabling Disaster Preparedness with People with Chronic Health Conditions and Disability is available here.
Red Cross REDiPlan and Emergency Checklist
A step by step approach to creating your personal emergency plan and developing a survival checklist and kit is available here.
SES Checklists
SA State Emergency Services have a range of tools and checklists to help you plan for floods, storms and heatwaves here.
CFS Resources
This SA Country Fire Services resource to help you develop your bushfire plan in 3 steps and 5 minutes.
Healthy in the Heat
Tips for staying healthy in the heat, with fact sheets and resources including translated resources are available here.