How to be more resilient as a community
Of growing importance is encouraging communities to have their own contingency plans and often comes under the heading of Community Resilience.
Guidelines and information from the Sussex Resilience Forum about being prepared and how to respond to an emergency can be found here.
- Within the home every family and individual should do what they can to have in place a Resilience Plan. It is as simple as having something in the car to clear the ice off a windscreen on an icy day to having a bag packed in case of evacuation.
- At a wider level it is about being on friendly terms with your neighbours so that there can be a collective response to a local crisis, being aware for example of any housebound, elderly or disabled neighbours and being prepared to help them when necessary.
- Within community Parish Councils and Residents Associations there should be contingency planning which will have access to resources to help in times of need, such as knowing where there are halls and places to which people could be evacuated if necessary and having access to the resources to support them over a period of time.
- It is good practice for churches and those involved in local Emergency Response planning to be aware of local contingency and Resilience plans.
On a wider scale Resilience Forums will network with a number of bodies, statutory, professional and voluntary, to ensure that in a crisis which can become an emergency, there is access to resources within the community.
At every level it is about carrying out sensible risk assessments and having in place the appropriate resources to meet the potential needs.
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