What is Community Resilience?

Community resilience is defined by the Scottish Government as:

“Communities and individuals harnessing resources and expertise to help themselves prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies, in a way that complements the work of the emergency responders.”

This is explored in more detail by Claire Black from Moffat Town Hall Trust who highlights the various important aspects of community resilience including:

• “Individual resilience ... not just people making sure they've got candles and torches in, but giving some thought to where they would go if they had to quickly move out of their home, what they would take, and who else they would need to consider (e.g. neighbours)”

• “Community groups getting together to identify resources, skills that are available within the community ... including schools, young people, town halls, and churches coming together to look at what the community has available to help in the event of an emergency and also being available to help recover from an emergency.”

Community Engagement

A key aspect of community resilience is how communities are involved or engaged in our resilience responses. Community engagement is a key part of developing a robust approach to community resilience. An engaged and involved community is much more likely to get involved in contributing to resilience responses and helping each other out.

This guide will refer to community engagement throughout and draws on the National Standards for Community Engagement as the core principles for effective community engagement in community resilience.  

What is the context?

There are various times when we particularly focus on community resilience. They are:

• Weather events – for example - storms, flooding, snow and ice, extreme heat and drought

• Other short-term emergency situations – power outages, gas escapes, fires, water supplies, etc.

• Longer-term emergencies – COVID-19, other health emergencies

Communities are already involved in many areas in organising, helping and being an increasingly important part of our responses to these kind of emergency events.

Why is it important for communities to be involved?

In this interview, Miranda Wilson from Falkirk Council talks about why it is important for communities to be involved in resilience responses.

“ ... communities play a crucial role in providing situational awareness, as each community has a deep understanding of their own area. There's no better insight into potential risks, key infrastructure, and the implications of an incident than those who are directly involved. Communities can help us better support them by sharing their unique knowledge and needs.”

Emergencies can occur at any time and, although our emergency services do an amazing job in all kinds of very trying circumstances, they can’t be everywhere at once. There is a very clear role for local communities to help out and to be part of a local – flexible - quick response when emergencies occur.

Our communities contain a wealth of local assets, knowledge and skills – the right people, given the right task, in the right place. Our communities also have well-established trusted relationships and networks, both formal and informal, which can greatly assist with both the response to emergencies and the recovery period afterwards. Claire Black from Moffat Town Hall Trust talks about the importance of this for their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“ ... having a lot of our volunteers, all of our volunteers are from the community, meant that when they were out and about delivering food parcels or prescriptions, they were hearing what was happening on the ground. I mean, even if it was talking to someone at the end of their garden and leaving a food parcel, they would hear how that person was doing and begin and be able to feed that back to us so that we could just assess what was happening. I think quite a lot of people prefer to receive help from people that they know or people that are in their community.”

A high level of community involvement and buy-in to emergency responses can greatly enhance the response and can add real value to the work of the statutory and emergency services. An example of how this is recognised and organised comes from Aberdeenshire Council - Aberdeenshire resilience framework. It highlights the importance of strong and organised community involvement in resilience responses and clear roles for everyone involved.

If you are concerned about how any of the emergency situations as outlined would affect your community and are interested in getting more involved, this guide sets out suggestions, hints, tips and useful links and resources which can help you on your way to becoming a more resilient community.

This Guide is set out in 4 sections from getting organised  through preparing for emergencies, responding to emergencies and  finally staying informed/keeping it going for the future.