Relationships Are What Makes Us

RELATIONSHIPS ARE WHAT MAKES US

What the Community Resilience Program tells us about social connection and mental health in disaster-impacted areas

María Cardoso and Shannon Harvey

June 2024

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

Relationships Australia NSW acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land and waters on which we live and work.

We acknowledge their Ancestors who first walked on this land and pay our respects to Elders past, present and future, for they carry the cultural wisdom, the stories, the traditions and dreaming.

With a commitment to Reconciliation, we acknowledge the enduring impact of past policies and practices and commit our endeavours to creating a just society and sector that celebrates the ongoing resilience and self-determination of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities.

Suggested citation:

Cardoso, M. & Harvey, S. (2024) Relationships Are What Make Us: What the Community Resilience Program tells us about social connection and mental health in disaster-impacted areas. Macquarie Park: Relationships Australia NSW.

ISBN: 978-0-6458142-3-1

© Relationships Australia NSW

Published by: Relationships Australia NSW

Macquarie Park NSW 2113

Acronyms

HNECC Hunter, New England & Central Coast Primary Health Network

LGA Local Government Areas

NSW New South Wales

RANSW Relationships Australia NSW

SNPHN Sydney North Primary Health Network

Executive Summary

Introduction

Background & Context

Research Questions

Methodology

Report Overview

Chapter 1. A Relational Approach to Community Resilience and Mental Health

The Mental Health Impacts of Climate Disasters

Social Capital as Critical to Community Resilience

A Role for the Family & Relationships Sector

Core Components of the RANSW Service Model

Phase 1: Community Engagement

Phase 2: Leadership Workshop

Phase 3: Support for Community Project Implementation

Conclusion

Chapter 2. What the Program Achieved Anticipated

Participant-Reported

Addressing

Scaling

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In mid-2020, in the wake of the NSW Black Summer bushfires and the first Covid lockdown in Greater Sydney, Relationships Australia NSW (RANSW) identified a need to work more systemically with people experiencing climaterelated mental distress, focusing not only on families but also local communities. A six-week online pilot in late 2020 was expanded into the Community Resilience Program in mid-2021, leveraging RANSW’s organisational expertise in relational mental health approaches, as well as evidence from disaster interventions in Australia and globally on the key role that community-level social connections play in post-disaster mental health recovery.

Over the last four years of implementation, we have worked with one full-time employee, the program lead, and one part-time facilitator. They have incorporated community feedback, continually refining the model to adapt to evolving needs and circumstances. This report describes the program’s current model, its role, outcomes, and contributions within the NSW disaster service system, and makes recommendations on the potential role of family and relationship service providers in future disaster resilience interventions.

Figure 1. RANSW Community Resilience Program Theory of Change

1.Identified Needs in DisasterImpacted Communities

• People are experiencing mental distress, and current disaster responses aren’t trauma-responsive, impacting them further

• Community leaders & first responders lack support for their own trauma and are burning out while supporting their communities

2.The Community Resilience Program offers a three-phase model of support

•Community engagement through awareness-raising, identification of leaders, community strengths & needs, and cocreation

• Four-module resilience leader workshop covering the impacts of trauma, resilience and project planning

•Post-workshop support for communities to implement their projects (1-6 months)

3.Outcomes

Direct Outcomes for Community Leaders

• Increased knowledge of collective trauma and working using a trauma-informed approach

• Improved social connections in their communities by implementing locally relevant projects

Indirect Outcomes for Community Members

• Leaders involved in disaster response interact with community using a trauma-informed approach

• More community members have positive social connections and engage safely in community resilience activities

4.Social Impact

Disaster-impacted communities in NSW experience less mental distress overall, even through ongoing disaster events

I. Core Components of the RANSW Service Model:

Evidence informing the model

Based on the analysis of published research literature, our own service delivery and evaluation data, and semi-structured interviews, we have identified key evidence that informs our program. This evidence is structured around three critical themes:

» The Mental Health Impacts of Climate Disasters: Disaster events are experienced as collective traumas, impacting individuals and communities together. Studies have demonstrated the relationship between these events and poor mental health outcomes, including increased anxiety and stress, depression, sleep disturbances, somatic post-traumatic stress disorder, somatic complaints, and grief (Patrick, Snell, Gunasiri, Garad, & Meadows, 2023; Kurth & Pihkala, 2022; Charlson, et al., 2021).

» Social Capital as Critical to Community Resilience: In times of crisis, individuals often turn to their family, friends, neighbours and colleagues first for support (Aldrich, Meyer, & Houston, 2015). Social capital plays a crucial role in effective disaster recovery by strengthening social connections and community bonds, thereby enhancing adaptive capacities necessary for preparing for and recovering from emergencies (Chamlee-Wright & Storr, 2011; Aldrich, Meyer, & Houston, 2015; Longman, et al., 2023; Gibbs, et al., 2021).

» A Role for the Family & Relationships Sector: Historically, Australia’s family and relationships sector has rarely been considered as more than peripheral players in the disaster response and recovery system. However, as evidence has grown around the critical role of social capital in individual, family and community mental resilience, there is a gap in interventions

that applied systemic, relational, traumainformed ways of working to disasterimpacted communities’ mental health needs. While individual mental health interventions will continue to play a role, the reality is that they are not widely available in disaster-impacted communities, and even those most at risk of mental health impacts, such as first responders, often do not seek such support (Smith, Dean, & Holmes, 2021).

Program phases and elements

By building community leaders’ knowledge around the impacts of trauma on community resilience, and their skills in trauma-responsive leadership, the program aims to increase community connection so that people can work together before, during, and after crises. The program involves three phases that are all necessary for its success:

» Phase 1, Community Engagement: It involves intensive research and in-person engagement with individual community leaders, organisations, and key stakeholders. This tailored approach ensures that the program is responsive to the unique context of each community. The community engagement phase typically involves three key steps: awareness-raising, engagement of community and co-creation.

» Phase 2, Workshop Delivery: The Community Resilience Leadership Workshop leverages existing community strengths by providing tools, education, and confidence for participants to develop their own community-led solutions for recovery and resilience building. This strengths-based approach enables communities to reestablish connections and build knowledge and skills to enhance their resilience against future disasters.

» Phase 3, Support for Project Implementation: Following the workshop, facilitators provide ongoing support to Resilience Leaders as they implement their community projects. This mentorship, lasting between one and six months, includes providing resources, guidance, and regular check-ins to ensure sustained action

II. Program Impact and Contribution:

Over the past four years, the program has trained 328 Resilience Leaders across more than one-fifth (28, 21%) of the state’s 128 Local Government Areas (LGAs), with funding from both the Hunter, New England, and Central Coast Public Health Network (HNECC PHN) and the Sydney North Primary Health Network (SNPHN). These Resilience Leaders have delivered numerous resilience projects within their communities.

and maximise project impact. Commonly, by bringing community leaders together into the workshop, they can strengthen their projects by collaborating and working jointly, sharing resources and expertise, and amplifying the impact of their individual projects.

Outcomes for community leaders

Post-workshop surveys and stakeholder interviews indicate significant knowledge gains, improved social connectedness, increased confidence to lead community projects, and improved trauma-responsiveness in leadership. Participant-reported outcomes broadly align with the anticipated direct and indirect outcomes described in the Theory of Change, as shown in the figure below:

• Increased knowledge of community-level resilience to mental distress.

• Increased knowledge of trauma-informed practice.

• Increased or improved social connections.

• Increased confidence to initiate and lead community projects.

• Improved trauma-responsiveness in leadership.

Outcomes for the whole community

• Increased opportunities to build social connections, as a result of community projects.

• Improved social connectedness across the community.

III. Unique Aspects of RANSW’s Service Model:

As NSW has faced successive climate disaster events over the last few years, the disaster prevention, response, and recovery sector has also grown. Other organisations now offer interventions designed to address the mental health impacts of disaster. Below, we consider participants’ views on what distinguishes the Community Resilience Program model from other interventions in this space.

Meaningful Community Collaboration:

The program’s three-phase model grounded the intervention in engaging meaningfully with community members, recognising that this would be key to its relevance and sustainability over the long term. The deep engagement with communities allowed tailoring interventions to specific needs and building trust in the organisation.

Trauma-Informed Practices:

Facilitators demonstrated trauma-informed approaches in every interaction, prioritising listening and adapting to community needs. Their approach to community engagement

reflected an understanding that they were working with traumatised people who had often been re-traumatised by not being heard by agencies who purported to help them.

Strengths-Based, Community-Led Approach:

Although a strength-based approach is common in the sector, interviewees noted that they were accustomed to outside agencies implementing pre-designed programs. It was empowering that RANSW staff, instead, affirmed the ideas of local community leaders as the best solutions for their communities. This expression of the strengths-based approach recognised that community-led recovery and resilience must be grounded in the existing strengths within the community.

Facilitators, Not Trainers:

Facilitators brought professional expertise and lived experience, fostering genuine, compassionate connections with participants. They were flexible, adapting content to the group and incorporating culturally safe practices.

IV. Role in NSW’s Disaster Response System:

The Community Resilience Program has demonstrated significant value in the NSW Local Government Areas (LGAs) where it has been implemented. Participant-reported outcomes indicate its effectiveness in increasing community social connectedness and reducing local disaster-related distress, setting it apart from other available programs. While these findings substantiate RANSW’s claim that the family and relationships sector

has a role to play in the disaster response ecosystem, it is unlikely that models like the Community Resilience Program will be sustainable for organisations to deliver without funding to resource a larger team. Below, we outline opportunities for the family and relationships sector in expanding this work in the future.

V. Recommendations

» Scaling Support for Community Leaders in NSW: As climate disasters increase, the program offers a model for government to fund at scale while maintaining localised delivery through community leaders.

» Introducing Support for Frontline Disaster Workers: Leveraging the family and relationships sector’s expertise in providing training and clinical supervision to professionals working with trauma.

» Workforce Development: Building capacity across RANSW to deliver the program through shadowing and mentoring, and potential upskilling of local leaders as professional facilitators.

» Integrating Individual and Family Relationship Services: Combining interventions that target building social capital at different levels, based on community needs.

Conclusion

The Community Resilience Program has made significant contributions to improving resilience to mental distress in disaster-impacted communities in NSW. By training local leaders and fostering community connections, the Program has demonstrated the importance of a systemic, relational, and trauma-informed approach to disaster resilience.

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT

In mid-2020, in the wake of the NSW Black Summer bushfires and the first Covid lockdown in Greater Sydney, Relationships Australia NSW (RANSW) practitioners identified a need to work more systemically with people experiencing climate-related mental distress, focusing not only on families but also local communities. Initially, a 6-week online group program, Resilience in a Changing Climate, was piloted with eight participants. Content focused on enhancing participants’ own awareness and building their skills to connect within their communities around action to address climate change and related distress. The internal evaluation of this pilot suggested that participants most valued the opportunity to have conversations around this issue in a group context, and that they valued the focus of the program on addressing distress by planning actions that they could take within their community (Elba & Nowland, 2020).

In early 2021, this pilot was developed into the more expanded Community Resilience Program, with funding from the Hunter, New England and Central Coast Public Health Network (HNECC PHN), targeting specific communities in rural NSW who were continuing to struggle with the mental health impacts of the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires. The program leveraged RANSW’s organisational expertise in group relationship education and relational mental health approaches, as well as just-published longitudinal evidence from interventions following the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 that demonstrated the key role of both family- and communitylevel social connection in post-disaster mental health recovery (Gibbs, et al., 2021). While the program has been iterated over time, including incorporating co-design to respond to local specificities, its core activities and Theory of Change remained largely consistent, as described in Figure 1 on the next page.

Figure 1. RANSW Community Resilience Program Theory of

Change

1.Identified Needs in DisasterImpacted Communities

• People are experiencing mental distress, and current disaster responses aren’t trauma-responsive, impacting them further

• Community leaders & first responders lack support for their own trauma and are burning out while supporting their communities

2.The Community Resilience Program offers a three-phase model of support

•Community engagement through awareness-raising, identification of leaders, community strengths & needs, and cocreation

• Four-module resilience leader workshop covering the impacts of trauma, resilience and project planning

•Post-workshop support for communities to implement their projects (1-6 months)

3.Outcomes

Direct Outcomes for Community Leaders

• Increased knowledge of collective trauma and working using a trauma-informed approach

• Improved social connections in their communities by implementing locally relevant projects

Indirect Outcomes for Community Members

• Leaders involved in disaster response interact with community using a trauma-informed approach

• More community members have positive social connections and engage safely in community resilience activities

4.Social Impact

Disaster-impacted communities in NSW experience less mental distress overall, even through ongoing disaster events

In short, the Community Resilience Program is grounded in the idea that by increasing local community leaders’ knowledge of the mental health impacts of climate disaster, and mentoring them to implement community disaster resilience projects in trauma-responsive ways, disaster-impacted communities will be more socially connected and more resilient to the mental health impacts of ongoing climate disasters (Aldrich D. P., 2017).

Four years on from the initial pilot, the program has trained 328 Resilience Leaders across more than one-fifth (28, 21%) of the state’s 128 Local Government Areas (LGAs)1, with funding from both the HNECC and the Northern Sydney PHNs. Resilience Leaders have delivered numerous resilience projects in their communities. At the same time, Australia has experienced an unprecedented escalation of climate disaster events, with 212 such disasters between January 2020 and April 2024, including 67 in NSW (Department of Home Affairs, 2024). Corresponding to this, NSW’s disaster response service system has expanded, including both state government agencies such as the Reconstruction Authority, for-profit actors such as insurance companies, and a wide range of regional and national community organisations. In this context, RANSW sought to review the program’s role, outcomes and contributions within the NSW disaster service system and make recommendations on what role family and relationships service providers might play in future disaster resilience interventions, if at all.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. At the end of its first four years, what are the core components of RANSW’s community resilience service model, and what evidence informs this model?

2. What contribution has the Community Resilience Program made to improving resilience to mental distress in disasterimpacted communities in NSW?

3. What distinguishes RANSW’s service model from other interventions targeted disasterrelated mental distress, if anything?

4. What role do current partners and other external stakeholders believe the family and relationships sector, including RANSW, should play in NSW’s disaster response system?

METHODOLOGY

Conducted between January and April 2024, this study took a mixed methods approach, analysing existing program data and collecting new qualitative data. Methods included:

• Narrative literature review, focused on published evidence on social capital, disaster resilience and mental health.

• Analysis of 11 narrative reports submitted to program funders in 2022 and 2023.

• Analysis of post-training survey responses from 188 (57%) participants who attended a Resilience Leaders workshop between 2022 and 2024.

• 11 semi-structured interviews, lasting between 30 and 60 minutes each, including with five current and former RANSW employees involved in designing and delivering the Community Resilience Program and six program participants. Five of the six program participants interviewed for this study were also employed in roles related to disaster resilience in their communities.

Quantitative analysis was conducted in MS Excel and qualitative, thematic analysis was conducted in MAXQDA. In both cases, initial coding and analysis was conducted by the lead author. This was then reviewed collaboratively in meetings between the two authors, including collaboration on mixed methods analysis and iteration of themes throughout the writing process.

REPORT OVERVIEW

This report is divided into three findings chapters, exploring each of the first three research questions in turn. In the conclusion, we answer the final research question, outlining opportunities to extend this approach in the future.

CHAPTER 1. A RELATIONAL APPROACH TO COMMUNITY RESILIENCE AND MENTAL HEALTH

“Climate events are accumulating, resulting in increased… anxiety for both those directly affected and those witnessing them. Specific climate events [are] resulting in whole communities experiencing… anxiety, grief and trauma”

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

This chapter addresses our first research question: at the end of its first four years, what are the core components of RANSW’s community resilience service model, and what evidence informs this model? Here, we analyse published research literature, our own service delivery and evaluation data and semistructured interviews.

THE MENTAL HEALTH IMPACTS OF CLIMATE DISASTERS

Unlike many traumatic events, disaster events are experienced as collective traumas. While individuals will be impacted by their own unique experience of the event, at the same time they experience the trauma together

with their family and community. As with individual traumas, collective traumas can have both immediate and long-term impacts that negatively disrupt the life of the family and community (Gil-Rivas & Kilmer, 2016).

As climate disasters have increased exponentially over the past two decades, studies have demonstrated the relationship between these events and poor mental health outcomes, including increased anxiety and stress, depression, sleep disturbances, somatic post-traumatic stress disorder, somatic complaints, and grief (Patrick, Snell, Gunasiri, Garad, & Meadows, 2023; Kurth & Pihkala, 2022; Charlson, et al., 2021). Here in Australia, longitudinal research with people

impacted by the Black Saturday fires in Victoria found that one-fifth of people affected were still experiencing diagnosable mental health conditions between three and five years after the fires, with older Australians, people with disabilities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and LGBTQI+ people over-represented (Gibbs, et al., 2021).

While the individual impacts of trauma are well documented, more recent research has explored how communities affected by disasters may also experience collective trauma. The collective impact of climaterelated issues on mental health extends to individuals both with and without direct disaster experience, as community trauma (Kurth & Pihkala, 2022) (Patrick, Snell, Gunasiri, Garad, & Meadows, 2023). As evidence of these wide-ranging and long-lasting mental health impacts has grown, researchers have highlighted the limitations of disaster recovery efforts focused on physical reconstruction and emphasised the need to consider the holistic needs of individuals and groups, including their mental health and wellbeing (Hall, et al., 2023), (Meyers & Zunin, 2000). Furthermore, developing comprehensive approaches to addressing climate impacts on mental health must include mental health interventions that address collective trauma and focus on the role of social support systems (Longman, et al., 2023; Cianconi, et al., 2023; Doppelt, 2023).

SOCIAL CAPITAL AS CRITICAL TO COMMUNITY RESILIENCE

At the individual level, resilience is best understood as the process that enables someone to successfully function and adapt despite adversity (Masten & Narayan, 2012). At the community level, then, we can think of resilience as a process that links “networked adaptive capacities” between people to enable their shared functioning and adaption (Norris, Stevens, Pfefferbaum, Wyche, & Pfefferbaum, 2008, p. 131). In times of crisis, individuals

often turn to their family, friends, neighbours and colleagues first for support (Aldrich, Meyer, & Houston, 2015). These networks of reciprocal, supportive, and trusting relationships – or, “social capital” – are the foundation of community resilience, enabling collective and coordinated efforts to share and distribute resources (Longman, et al., 2023), (Gil-Rivas & Kilmer, 2016).

More specifically, though, Aldrich & Meyer (2015) argue that there are three forms of social capital: “bonding” social capital, involving emotionally close relationships such as friends and family; “bridging” social capital, encompassing connections between loosely connected individuals through involvement in community groups and associations; and “linking” social capital, denoting relationships with individuals who can connect others to power or resources. Understanding and leveraging these forms of connection are essential for enhancing disaster resilience, as all those levels of connections are key to disaster recovery and preparation for future adversities, including reducing the impacts of trauma (Longman, et al., 2023; Gibbs, et al., 2021; Aldrich D. P., 2017).

In disaster-affected communities, resilience is cultivated through collaboration, trust, and proactive engagement. Social capital plays a crucial role in effective disaster recovery by strengthening social connections and community bonds, thereby enhancing adaptive capacities necessary for preparing for and recovering from emergencies (ChamleeWright & Storr, 2011; Aldrich, Meyer, & Houston, 2015; Longman, et al., 2023; Gibbs, et al., 2021). Consequently, the strength of social capital is a determining factor in achieving effective disaster resilience, which encompasses the network of relationships, trust, and shared values binding communities together (Aldrich, Meyer, & Houston, 2015). These connections serve as a critical resource, offering emotional support, facilitating

information dissemination, and enabling resource mobilisation during crises (Gibbs, et al., 2021).

A ROLE FOR THE FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS SECTOR

Historically, Australia’s family and relationships sector has rarely been considered as more than peripheral players in the disaster response and recovery system. However, as evidence has grown around the critical role of social capital in individual, family and community mental resilience, Relationships Australia NSW identified a gap in interventions that applied systemic, relational, traumainformed ways of working to disasterimpacted communities’ mental health needs. While individual mental health interventions will continue to play a role, the reality is that they are not widely available in disasterimpacted communities, and even those most at risk of mental health impacts, such as first responders, often do not seek such support (Smith, Dean, & Holmes, 2021). A qualitative study with volunteer firefighters who had responded to the NSW Black Summer bushfires found that all reported impacts on their wellbeing, with a key finding being that interventions should not only rely on people impacted to ‘reach out’, but need local leaders who are empowered to ‘reach in’ to support first responders in their communities (Smith, Holmes, Larkin, & Dobson, 2022).

For both RANSW and the HNECC PHN who first commissioned the program following the pilot, family and relationships services brought a fundamentally different perspective to individualised mental health responses, grounded in understanding of relationships between people. The service model proposed by RANSW, to be rolled out first in disasterimpacted communities in regional NSW, started from this premise, as described by this program participant:

“Relationships Australia… know the value of relationships in every aspect of a system, an organisation, a community, a family. It doesn’t matter what it is. The relationships are what’s going to make it... If you want changes, it comes down to the relational concept”

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

CORE COMPONENTS OF THE RANSW SERVICE MODEL

Building on learning from the program pilot, which identified that participants particularly valued the opportunity to develop plans for action in their own communities, and the need to ensure long-term sustainability, RANSW’s Community Resilience Program was designed as a leadership intervention. By building community leaders’ knowledge around the impacts of trauma on community resilience, and their skills in trauma-responsive leadership, the program aims to increase community connection so that people can work together before, during, and after crises:

“It’s not about [offering] therapies [to] people. It’s really about looking at community activities that will support [their] mental health and wellbeing… increasing the delivery of those supports in line with what communities are needing”

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

In every location the program is delivered in, it involves three phases.

• Phase 1: Community Engagement

• Phase 2: Leadership Workshop

• Phase 3: Mentorship for Community Projects

Each of these phases are described on the following pages.

PHASE 1: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

This phase takes time, involving intensive research and in-person engagement with individual community leaders, organisations and key stakeholders to understand community needs and recruit the right group of community leaders to the program.

“[We are] co-designing with the local community to build [each] Leadership Resilience Workshop. So [we] really go into the community, find out who are the people who have the ability, you know, the resources, the knowledge of the community”

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

The community engagement phase can look quite different in different areas, particularly depending on whether the program is being delivered in a rural, regional or urban area. However, regardless of these differences, as shown in Figure 2 below, it typically involves awareness-raising, engagement of community leaders, and then co-creation to adapt to the community’s specific needs.

AWARENESS-RAISING

Local marketing: flyers and posters (printed and digital), interviews on local radio, locally targeted social media (in urban areas only)

Introductory visits to local community spaces

e.g. libraries, cafes, SES, RFS

ENGAGING LEADERS

Key contact database created

In-person meetings with community leaders

In-person meetings with local Recovery Officers, council staff, community service providers

CO-CREATION

Community conversations, involving Resilience Leaders from other areas

Meetings with prospective Resilience Leaders and key stakeholders to understand specific community needs

Workshop adaption to local context

Figure 2. Community Engagement Process

Program facilitators use this engagement and consultation time to build a deep understanding of the community’s characteristics and requirements, to which they adapt the tools and techniques they choose to use in the workshop. For participants, the intensive nature of this community engagement was a key differentiator from other training providers:

“I think one of the major differences before the program was delivered was that the facilitator actually came up and met with service providers and did a lot of meetings online as well”.

– program participant, New England, February 2024.

Connecting with service providers and volunteer leaders before moving ahead with the workshop allows the RANSW team to understanding where power and resources are held, and foster collaboration and connection between community members in ways that aligned with existing community recovery plans.

Table 1. Leadership Workshop Modules

MODULE 1: COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS AND DISASTERS

• Getting to know the participants, establishing connections and trust

• Community exploration: who/what/where is your community?

• Disasters: definition, types & impacts

• How communities best prepare for and recover from disasters

PHASE 2: LEADERSHIP WORKSHOP

The Community Resilience Leadership Workshop contains four modules that are commonly delivered over two days, but can be adapted as a one-day session as needed. Together, the four modules seek to leverage existing community strengths by providing the tools, education, and confidence to develop their own community-led solutions to recovery and resilience building based on their respective experiences and needs. This approach is strengths-based and enables communities to come together and reestablish community connections as they build knowledge and skills to develop resilience solutions to strengthen their communities against future disasters.

While each module covers a standard set of topics, as shown in Table 1 below, facilitators may choose different activities and spend more or less time on different topics or modules, depending on what they have learned in the prior community engagement phase.

MODULE 2: RESPONDING TO THE MENTAL HEALTH IMPACTS OF DISASTERS

• The impacts of disaster on individual wellbeing

• Supporting others in difficult times

• Tips and techniques for staying well

MODULE 3: COMMUNITY RESILIENCE AUDIT

• What does a resilient community look like?

• Community audit –where are the strengths of the community?

• Ideas to build capacity

MODULE 4: COMMUNITY ACTION PLANNING

• Community led resilience – distilling the ideas

• Formulate a plan

• Build a team

• Help and support

• The next steps

Modules 3 and 4, focused on supporting leaders to audit their community’s resilience and plan a project that they can lead implementation of, demonstrates the workshop’s intention to empower action, rather than it being simply a learning opportunity.

Further, beyond the specific content of the workshop, facilitators are clear that they are not only teaching trauma-responsive leadership, but modelling this approach through the experiential design and interactive facilitation style of delivery. Participants described this approach as unique, and very different to what they were used to attending:

“I haven’t really done anything like that before and like even sort of the way it was delivered... it was kind of modelling the kind of behaviour that you would have in a community if you’re working with them, working through a disaster sort of situation or recovery situation, so that was really good… it meant that I could put some of those learnings into practice straight away”.

–program participant, Sydney, March 2024.

In interviews, RANSW facilitators explained that the workshops are designed to be a safe, respectful and supportive environment, where trust is built and emotions regulated. From the planning to the delivery, facilitators aim to create a space where participants can feel secure and engaged, and despite the serious topics being covered, they include joy, games and laughter.

“It was refreshing not to have to rely on PowerPoints… it was much more conversational and friendly, very comfortable. Very inclusive and some of the activities we did were fantastic. Just breaking up, you know, the heavy content and also getting us to use different parts of our brain. A bit of creativity, a bit of laughter”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

PHASE 3: SUPPORT FOR COMMUNITY PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

As with the community engagement before the workshop, support for trained Resilience Leaders to implement the projects they have identified is key. This support is provided by the same facilitators who delivered the workshop, lasts between one and six months, and can include access to resources, mentorship, and guidance to navigate challenges and maximise project impact. Regular check-ins and followup sessions ensure momentum from the workshops is translated into tangible action.

Participants describe this ongoing support as a point of difference from other training they received, and as critical to enabling them to make meaningful change in their communities.

“After the workshop, there was follow up provided. So that again was massive. Because in these… rural kind of areas, there are a lot of programs who come in and leave, and there’s no real follow up from the content that’s delivered”.

–program participant, Mid North Coast, February 2024.

“The fruit of anything is action. So I know that after I went to a couple of the workshops… the ones I was involved with, those community groups went on to complete a project and I was involved in some of that project work… that’s very impressive when you can see that, you can actually taste the fruit of the work that’s been done”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

While Resilience Leaders choose to implement a broad range of community projects, at their heart, they are all focused on strengthening community connections, in line with the evidence on the role of social capital in community resilience. Commonly, by bringing community leaders together into the workshop, they are able to strengthen their projects by collaborating and working jointly, sharing resources and expertise. Facilitators observed that this allowed leaders to address complex challenges more effectively and amplified the impact of their individual projects.

“You’re bringing everybody together in a space and you’re creating that commonality… but then you’re also kind of giving these tools to better navigate the next steps and to build… [and help them understand] that a lot of what’s happening in communities is completely normal and we need to find alternative ways to build resilience. And it’s through the people that live in these communities”.

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

CONCLUSION

Relationships Australia NSW’s Community Resilience Program is an evidence-informed intervention, building on research with disaster-impacted communities in Australia and internationally that has found that community-level social connections are critical to community resilience, including psychological resilience. Importantly, the service model is not simply a leadership training workshop, but is a three-phase process that ensures the intervention targets the right people and empowers them to continue building their community’s resilience in the long-term.

CHAPTER 2. WHAT THE PROGRAM ACHIEVED

Between 2021 and 2024, the Community Resilience Program has trained 328 Resilience Leaders in 28 NSW LGAs, who have delivered local projects to build their community’s social connections and mental resilience in the face of ongoing climate disasters. These projects have been diverse, adapting to local context, including mindfulness groups, creative workshops and events, Christmas markets, bush regeneration groups, disaster preparedness sessions, regular community morning teas and various community “tree” projects.

This chapter presents analysis of 188 participants’ post-workshop survey responses since 2022 and 11 stakeholder interviews conducted in early 2024 to understand what contribution these activities have made to improving resilience to mental distress in disaster-impacted communities in NSW, between 2021 and 2024.

ANTICIPATED PROGRAM OUTCOMES

As shown in Figure 1 on page 10, the service model described in the previous chapter is designed to deliver direct outcomes in terms of community leaders being empowered to implement community-relevant social connection projects and doing so in a traumaresponsive way. As shown in Figure 3 on the following page, this is expected to deliver indirect outcomes of community members feeling supported to engage in disaster resilience activities in their community and being more socially connected in their community. If these outcomes are achieved, we would expect to see a population-level impact on reduced mental distress in disasterimpacted communities in NSW.

Figure 3. Anticipated Program Outcomes

Direct OutcomesIndirect Outcomes

•Community leaders understand the impacts of collective trauma and how to work in a trauma-informed way.

•Community leaders have improved social connections in their communities.

•Community leaders implement locally-relevant projects aiming to increase social connection.

• Community leaders involved in disaster resilience interact with community members in a trauma-responsive way.

• More community members feel supported to engage safely in community disaster resilience activities.

• More community members have positive social connections with other people in their community, other than their immediate family members.

Impact

• Disaster-impacted communities in NSW demonstrate reduced mental distress, even when experiencing ongoing disaster events.

PARTICIPANT-REPORTED OUTCOMES

Program participants who completed all four workshop modules were asked to complete a survey that asked them to assess changes in their knowledge of trauma-informed practice and community resilience to mental distress, as well as their confidence in implementing their planned project. The survey was iterated over time, in collaboration with RANSW’s research team, to respond to learning about

what survey questions and methods were acceptable and valid within the communities the team was working. Semi-structured interviews conducted with participants whose projects had been implemented allowed us to understand some changes present over the longer term.

Participant-reported outcomes broadly aligned with the anticipated direct and indirect outcomes described in the Theory of Change, as shown in Figure 4 on the following page.

Figure 4. Participant-reported outcomes

• Increased knowledge of community-level resilience to mental distress.

Outcomes for community leaders

• Increased knowledge of trauma-informed practice.

• Increased or improved social connections.

• Increased confidence to initiate and lead community projects.

• Improved trauma-responsiveness in leadership.

Outcomes for the whole community

• Increased opportunities to build social connections, as a result of community projects.

• Improved social connectedness across the community.

Each of these outcomes are discussed in detail through the rest of the chapter.

INCREASED KNOWLEDGE OF MENTAL RESILIENCE & TRAUMAINFORMED PRACTICE

Workshop Module 1 covers information about disaster recovery, the impacts of trauma at the individual and community level, and the role of social connection in building community resilience. This module aims to provide leaders with the foundational knowledge they need to take action, following the workshop. Workshop participants reported an average increase in knowledge of between 1.1 and 1.4 points on a 5-point scale, as shown in Table 2 below, with knowledge most commonly increasing from a self-rated “average” to “good”. In opentext responses, participants described being surprised to learn about the long timeframes of recovery, the impact of trauma on young people, and how everyone processes trauma differently and “is on a different part of the journey”.

“Workshop gave me a great understanding of how disasters can impact communities and that community-led and developed initiatives at a time of response, recovery and preparedness are essential in building community connectedness & resilience”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

“I have worked in the disaster recovery space for some time, but I learned a lot from the simplicity, practicality and accessibility of the workshop, and from the wisdom of the group”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

Table 2. Self-Reported Change in Knowledge

Sample = 65; 5-point rating scale, with 1 being ‘none’ and 5 being ‘excellent’

Importantly, interviewees described how leaders who participated in the workshops took this knowledge and shared it more widely in their communities and with other disasterimpacted communities around NSW. For example, Resilience Leaders created locallyspecific materials such as flyers, magnets and booklets to distribute local emergency, wellbeing and self-care information at community events, and developed local protocols to support community resilience in disaster. They also collaborated with the RANSW project team to develop resources that could be used more widely, including a handout for community leaders with suggested resources and activities for community resilience, and a 15-minute video with tips for others in similar situations to themselves.2

Interviewees described how the program’s focus on increasing the knowledge of community leaders was an effective strategy to increase impact across the community.

“They have ripple effects that are so much greater than what I thought could ever be achieved… for someone in their HSC year, to get it off the ground and in such a successful way”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

INCREASED SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS

Participants reported improved quantity and quality of social connections in their communities, both for community leaders through pre-workshop engagement and the workshop itself, and for the broader community as a result of project implementation. In particular, the way that the project team brought together volunteer community leaders, business owners, local government staff and community service providers in a single workshop was seen as a

2

“…they were in an area impacted by disaster, so often [service providers] had their own personal stories of it. I found it really sort of empowering. It guided people to be able to engage with these concepts sensitively and with a lens of what’s happened, like understanding the theory behind their experiences of what they’ve gone through and what other people went through and how that will impact challenges in building resilience and recovery”.

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

strength of the approach. Interviewees noted that even though some participants were employed to do disaster recovery work while others were volunteer leaders, the workshop brought them together as community leaders who had also been personally impacted by disaster: As the Community Resilience Program evolved and the team observed the role that the workshop itself was playing in fostering social connectedness, we added a question to the post-workshop survey about this. Of the 80 participants who subsequently answer the question, 100% said that they felt more connected with other people in the workshop at the end. Across all 188 survey responses, connections built with other workshop participants was commonly reported in opentext responses as the most useful aspect of the workshop.

“I was engaged, learning, resources were different, and I left with a network of contacts and ideas”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

“The opportunity to network and share ideas focusing on the disaster cycle and mental health resilience for the community”.

–workshop participant, 2023.

“Identifying the connectors in my community and workshopping ideas”.

–workshop participant, 2023.

Interviewees described how social connections that were built during the workshop were often deepened as community members worked together afterwards.

“InTingha[there was] a collective, a community group out there who were roughly affiliated. They had a group going, but the project helped them to incorporate. So they got all the structures together so they could apply for grants and they could register as a charity and so forth. And then to see some of the growth in that group has been wonderful”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

This suggests the effectiveness of an approach that supports community leaders to operate and grow community groups, which was also recommended in the 10-year follow-up study of the Victorian bushfires (Gibbs, et al., 2021).

INCREASED CONFIDENCE TO LEAD COMMUNITY PROJECTS

Modules 3 and 4 of the workshop involved community leaders undertaking an audit of their own community’s resilience and developing an action plan for their own project

to build social connectedness. By prioritising practical step-by-step implementation processes, facilitators empowered community leaders with the confidence to take meaningful action without overwhelming them. Reiterating the significance of small actions, in postworkshop surveys participants reported feeling equipped to implement their project.

“I’ve got the skills and a plan”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

“[I appreciated] the steps that we were guided through to create a project plan and the process to apply for funding”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

“[I’ve] learnt to build resilience in communities [and] have developed a plan. Excellent step by step process”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

“My workshopping today has given me a clearer view of how to go about this”.

–workshop participant, 2023.

In the later round of surveys, we began asking explicitly whether participants expected to apply their learnings within their community. Of the 80 participants who responded, 100% said that they would. They reported that they intended to:

• Share information and resources in their family, workplaces, and with neighbours

• Collaborate with existing initiatives in their communities

• Initiate their own project to bring their community together

• Connect with community service providers and local government

• Undertake further training to build their own skills, or host events to build skills in their community.

Resilience Leaders have implemented projects in their communities, including tailgate meetups for farmers to connect socially, creation and distribution of disaster preparedness kits, and creative workshops encompassing photography, writing, photography, mandala painting and karaoke. In Walcha, a 17-year-old high school student led a Blue Tree Project to raise awareness of mental health in his community.3

Interviewees explained that the workshop created a safe space for community leaders’ own ideas to be validated, and for them to connect with others who could help them take action:

“I think because the participants had so much buy-in… It was their ideas that they took ownership of it, so that that’s very powerful. And then they took it back into their communities and got more support and energy going. And then that’s why things got done”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

IMPROVED TRAUMARESPONSIVENESS IN LEADERSHIP

Interviewees described how they had been able to implement the learning about traumainformed practice and social connection to increase the effectiveness of their own programs in their communities. For some service providers, for example, their involvement in the program enabled them to build trust in their community and as a result they’ve been able to deliver further

interventions that they hadn’t been successful with implementing previously.

“I’ve run some stuff out there again, what helped me was because I was a part of the Resilience leadership stuff. People got to know me, so they were happy for me to come in and do my work also, which was fantastic”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

As community leaders and people employed to work in disaster preparedness and response, program participants were commonly facilitating workshops and other activities within their communities themselves. However, many had not had training or mentoring in how to facilitate in a traumaresponsive way. Some of these interviewees described how they have integrated facilitation techniques they’d observed in the workshop into their own practice.

“When we ran our meetings with the community… we mentioned ‘it’s OK to take breaks, you know, get up and leave or if you need any support just let us know’, that sort of thing. And I probably would never even thought about that before the workshop. I’m sure if people looked upset in the workshop then we would have been sensitive towards them, but it was good to kind of be mentally prepared for that as well”.

–program participant, Sydney, March 2024.

“It was just really good to have, not just the content… but also the training exercises and the way the training was delivered. We used both of those things ongoingly in lots of other kind of workshops or in services, so it’s really helpful to me as well”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

CONCLUSION

Outcomes reported by program participants validate the Community Resilience Program’s Theory of Change. In particular, reports from interviewees suggest that the programs approach of increasing community leaders’ knowledge and improving their social connectedness across the three program phases (community engagement, workshop delivery, support for project implementation) has likely been effective in increasing social connectedness across their communities more broadly.

CHAPTER 3. A UNIQUE SERVICE MODEL?

As set out in the previous chapters, over the past four years the Community Resilience Program has developed into a well-regarded, evidence-informed community intervention, reaching communities across a fifth of the state, despite only having one full time staff member. However, as NSW has faced successive climate disaster events over the same period, the disaster prevention, response and recovery sector has also grown. Other organisations now offer interventions designed to address the mental health impacts of disaster. In this chapter, we consider interviewees’ views on what distinguishes the Community Resilience Program model from other interventions in this space.

MEANINGFUL COMMUNITY COLLABORATION

From the beginning, the program’s three-phase model (see page 16) grounded the intervention in engaging meaningfully with community members, recognising that this would be key to relevance and sustainability over the long term. In practice, this involved the program manager, and later also an additional part-time facilitator,

to spend days at a time travelling around the state to introduce themselves and get to know community members in person.

While the core components of the workshop were delivered in some form everywhere, interviewees appreciated that it wasn’t simply an “off-the-shelf” product, but that it was tailored to their specific context and needs, based on time spent with the community, hearing what they wanted. In particular, interviewees noted that the facilitators understood that not all disasters are the same, and that the specificities of their community’s experience of a particular disaster needed to be heard and understood.

“It didn’t feel like it was some generic kind of workshop that’s been in 20 other locations. Yeah. And that work they put into building that group trust and group identity at the beginning of the workshops, really important stuff that they did so well”.

–program participant, Mid North Coast, February 2024.

“They tried to understand the context, the area, and the communities and people who would be attending so that the delivery could be catered to the audience”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

Interviewees believed that the work undertaken to establish relationships built trust in the organisation, which resulted in the program being better received.

“When you’ve got a good idea like a workshop or education or whatever, you can’t roll that out unless you consult with the community and do that in a respectful way. And I think Relationships Australia did that… [now] even after the project might be finished, there’s still an ongoing relationship… you should bebuilding up those connections for future things… Relationships Australia were very, very mindful and good atthat and sticking to doing what they said they’d do”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

Interviewees’ emphasis on reliability and organisational investment in relationshipbuilding in communities reflects evidence established elsewhere, that has demonstrated that deep, often multi-year engagements are necessary to build the required trust for community engagement with interventions (Brand, 2023).

TRAUMA-INFORMED, IN PRACTICE

While content about the impacts of trauma and trauma-responsive leadership is included in the workshop, program facilitators explained that what was most important was that they demonstrated a trauma-informed approach in every interaction. Their approach to

community engagement, which prioritised listening and adapting work to community needs, reflected an understanding that they were working with traumatised people who had often been re-traumatised by not being heard by agencies who purported to help them.

In the workshop itself, the facilitators engaged participants in trauma-informed ways, such as spending time on establishing safety for open dialogue, incorporating moments of relaxation and humour such as games to alleviate stress and foster connection, while also holding participants with sufficient structure.

“The workshop was beautifully and equitably facilitated, with plenty of ice breakers, mood lifters and energy raisers”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

“It was fun and engaging, at the same time it was full of relevant information”.

–workshop participant, 2023.

In interviews, program staff were clear that although the workshop appeared relaxed to participants and was flexible enough to be adapted to the group’s needs, it was also highly structured and carefully planned behind the scenes.

“Each component is different for every workshop because it’s based on the people… you have to actually have the ability to analyse your participants and that comes with experience and then see what it is that they’re bringing and what they need and then provide a really authentic learning experience for them”.

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

STRENGTHS-BASED, COMMUNITY-LED

Strengths-based approaches are foundational to practice across the family and relationships sector, so are in no way unique to this program. However, interviewees explained that they were used to outside agencies coming in with pre-designed programs to implement, and it was empowering that, instead, RANSW staff affirmed that as local community leaders, their ideas were most likely to be the best solutions for their communities. This particular expression of the strengths-based approach recognised that community-led recovery and resilience had to be grounded in the strengths that already existed in that community.

“I think [the program’s] hitting the spot because you wanna raise up your local resources, you want to empower people in the local communities and they’re always there. They’ll be always 2-3, whatever the number is, people who are very community-minded and they will be volunteering for stuff and they do influence those around them, and sometimes they’ll speak for people who don’t speak up”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

Interviewees explained that the structure of the workshops also created a feeling of empowerment, with participants’ voices heard and collaborative approaches centred. Participants were provided with opportunities for self-reflection, providing time to consider the needs of their community.

“There was probably on some level, and this is hard to describe, but I think there was some empowerment of people and they felt they gained confidence”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

“This project certainly gave [the group] more energy, and it gives them direction and you know it gives them confidence. So in that respect, it was very valuable. And for the project… it wouldn’t have happened without involvement from Relationships Australia and the project, I don’t think it would have got off the ground or it would have struggled”.

–program participant, New England, February 2024.

By focusing on development of their own community projects in Modules 3 and 4, participants received validation of their ideas and increased their confidence to develop and implement their ideas afterwards.

FACILITATORS, NOT TRAINERS

Finally, in both post-workshop surveys and interviews, participants described the RANSW program team’s deep skills as group facilitators, far beyond what they might expect from a simple training delivery. Over the three years of the post-pilot implementation, the Community Resilience Program was delivered by Paula Paananen, with additional support from Christine Black from 2022 onwards. Both team members brought both professional expertise and lived experience to their roles, and this personal understanding of what it is like to live with disasters was crucial to their legitimacy with community leaders who engaged with the program.

Across participant responses about what they found to be unique about the program team’s facilitation, three key themes were identified, as described in Figure 5 on the following page.

Firstly, facilitators weaved their own lived experience into their delivery, which participants experienced as demonstrating their respect and connection with participants, as well as validating the expertise they brought.

Several participants described the facilitators’ delivery as “genuine”, while others described them as delivering with “compassion” and “kindness”.

“They were able to actually be in a respectful way that felt genuine”.

–workshop participant, 2023.

“They had lived experiences, which helped with the understanding of the group”.

–workshop participant, 2023.

Secondly, participants appreciated that although the facilitators brought useful knowledge to share with the group, they were also open to learning from the expertise in the group and modelled how to share power and learn from each other.

“The facilitator was knowledgeable, but also open to new ideas”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

“Everyone was totally involved, we learnt off each other. The learning activities were thought provoking”.

–workshop participant, 2022.

Lastly, participants noted that the facilitators were flexible and adapted their content to the group on the day, as well as bringing a diversity and inclusion lens and incorporating culturally safe practices.

“They are in tune with where the group’s at and be able to, you know, shift if they need to, or change the content or the delivery of the content if needed”.

–workshop participant, New England, February 2022.

Figure 5. Characteristics of Facilitators

Inclusive and flexible

Genuine, with their own lived experience of disasters

Bringing knowledge, but also there to learn from the group

ADDRESSING IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES IN AN ENGAGEMENT-INTENSIVE SERVICE MODEL

RANSW’s Community Resilience Program is not a trauma training course for community leaders, it is a community development intervention. While evidence-informed and built from the organisation’s knowledge and strengths, the intense community engagement required of an intervention being delivered by such a small program team meant that providing sustainable management and operational support to the program was challenging.

RANSW employee interviewees noted that program staff were often isolated from the broader organisation and struggled to see learning from the Community Resilience Program integrated into other programs, or vice versa.

“Our existing workers are finding… [that] they’re not really connected to anybody except [their managers]. And I think that’s tough for staff. I think the resourcing model needs to be looked at so we can support whoever it is [in the role], because they do pretty incredible work supporting people where there’s lots of trauma”.

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

Program funding from two Primary Health Networks over the past few years has never allowed for more than one full time staff member, which meant that unlike other teams in the organisation, Community Resilience Program employees had limited access to larger networks of professional support that staff of other programs in the organisation had enjoyed.

This lack of substantial or ongoing funding has meant that while community engagement and building trusting relationships is core to the service model, delivering this has relied on the organisation retaining two key staff members, without the ability to build up a broader, skilled team. For both delivery staff and managers, identifying resources to cover the community engagement work that makes the program successful has been an ongoing challenge.

“Both of the workers say it’s about building relationships. We can’t just go in and run a group like we would in other areas and then walk out. It’s very much about putting gum boots on and getting involved and building really strong connections”.

–RANSW employee, February 2024.

CONCLUSION

Community Resilience Program participants perceive the program to offer a unique service, when compared with other mental health and resilience interventions they have encountered in their disaster recovery work. Specifically, they identify the program’s genuine community collaboration and trauma-informed, strengthsbased practice, along with the expertise and experience of the facilitators, as critical to its success. However, the deep community engagement that makes this program unique is also what has made it challenging to properly fund and integrate into the organisation’s business.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

This review of the Community Resilience Program suggests that the service model that has been iterated over the past four years is highly valued in the one in five NSW LGAs it has been implemented in. Participant-reported outcomes, from both post-training surveys and follow-up interviews, suggest that the program is likely to be effective at increasing community social connectedness and as a result, reducing disaster-related distress at the local population level. Further, participants perceive it as unique from other offerings that are available to them.

While these findings substantiate RANSW’s claim that the family and relationships sector has a role to play in the disaster response ecosystem, it is unlikely that models like the Community Resilience Program will be sustainable for organisations to deliver without funding to resource a larger team. Below, we outline opportunities for the family and relationships sector in expanding this work in the future

SCALING SUPPORT FOR COMMUNITY LEADERS IN NSW

Interviewees noted that while the program has had an impressive reach given minimal staffing, there remained significant unmet need across NSW. As disasters continue to increase in frequency as the climate crisis escalates, community leaders across the state are being forced into disaster response and

trauma work, without any training or support to do so. With the restructure of NSW’s disaster response under the Reconstruction Authority, the state government’s preference for funding larger organisations has the potential to negatively impact local community leaders and groups. The Community Resilience Program, or a similar model, can offer both a vehicle for government to fund at scale, while maintaining localised delivery through community leaders.

INTRODUCING SUPPORT FOR FRONTLINE DISASTER WORKERS

RANSW facilitators noticed that many of the community leaders they worked with through the program were engaged in traumatic work with traumatised people, without adequate preparation, training or supervision. These include first responders, recovery workers in local government, and private sector workers such as insurance agents. These professionals are exposed to high levels of trauma, and without support, are experiencing burnout and leaving their roles.

Interviewees noted that the family and relationships sector has substantial expertise in providing training and clinical supervision to professionals working with trauma, and that these skills could be leveraged in support of the disaster recovery sector.

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

In its own program, RANSW’s reliance on two key staff members has resulted in a missed opportunity to build capacity across the organisation. While the facilitators’ skills and orientation were critical to the program’s success (see page 31), these are skills that are often found in key professional roles in the family and relationships sector, including counsellors, mediators and group facilitators. However, RANSW interviews felt that developing staff to be able to deliver the Community Resilience Program would not simply be a matter of a ‘train the trainer’ workshop, but rather would involve shadowing and mentoring over time, including in effective community engagement approaches in rural areas. They argued that it may also be beneficial to consider skilling up local leaders across the state to become professional facilitators in their region, rather than relying on staff currently based in Sydney.

INTEGRATING INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIP SERVICES

Finally, the Community Resilience Program has focused on building bridging social capital –connectedness between community members who aren’t related to each other – because this was the area of need most clearly identified in the evidence base. Recently, however, one of the areas involved in the first round of project implementation requested further support from RANSW in the form of relationships counselling services. This suggests that there may be a role in future iterations of the service model to consider combining interventions that target building social capital at different levels.

CONCLUSION

Communities in NSW can no longer expect lengthy periods of “recovery” from disaster, but are instead facing recurrent, ongoing disasters from which it is impossible to ever recover. Rather, people are needing to adapt to the new normal of a changed climate, and the success of the Community Resilience Program demonstrates again the critical role of placebased, community-led approaches in adaptation, here in NSW and around the world. Community leaders are able and willing to do this work, but doing so in a sustainable way will require substantially increased resourcing at the state and national level.

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