Section 1 - Get involved

A stage-by stage approach to community involvement in resilience  

Why should we organise collectively?

While individual responses are always very useful and are appreciated a more organised and collective response can:

• Help to ‘join the dots’ of the individual and group responses and maximise the skills, knowledge and networks of local people

• Help to shape the most effective community response to emergency situations

• Help to join up and improve communication with statutory and emergency services

In many communities people have already come together to form a group that leads on local resilience planning. These are sometimes called community resilience groups (CRGs) and may sit as a subgroup of the local community council. This allows CRGs to be covered by community council liability insurance cover for volunteers. In other areas, where the CRG is separate, they have explored other options for that insurance coverage.  

Whatever the level of response you decide on or that you feel is appropriate it’s always  useful to have a plan for how you’re going to go about getting organised. Here are some things for you to think about.

Involving People

You will need to consider how you involve your whole community including any more vulnerable groups. To do this you may need to work with other organisations who provide direct services or support. Your Council or local Health Services may be useful contact here. [DA4] 

Here are some helpful tips/things to think about:

• Where possible we should have representation/involvement from all sections of our community e.g. older people, young people, minority groups, people who face additional barriers.

• We should work with the services/groups who may have contact with all sections of our community.

• We should ensure that we have information that is accessible to all of our community – including in different languages, easy-read versions and in different formats.

• We should let people know what we’re planning to do and give them the opportunity to be involved – this could be through a local leaflet, news article, on social media or through a public meeting or event. You could also do a local survey to gauge awareness and interest in community resilience. An example shown here is from Moffat in Dumfries & Galloway - Moffat Community Resilience Survey.docx

What’s already happening?

•  There will be someone responsible for community resilience within your local Council, it’s always useful to find out who this person is as they may already have contacts in your local area.

• Local mapping is a good idea – bring together as many people from local groups and organisations as possible so you can share this knowledge collectively and identify issues/gaps to be addressed.

Example – Community Resilience Mapping in Moffat  

Planning and Working Together 

You will now need to think about how you would prefer to get organised to take forward your local community resilience planning and responses. Your local Council may be able to help with this so it’s always a good idea to contact them first before you start setting anything up. It’s important to remember that communities are busy places – there are lots of things happening.

 Here are some helpful tips/things to think about:

• The roles and responsibilities of everyone involved are clear and understood

• Decision-making processes and procedures are agreed and followed.

• The methods of communication used meet the needs of all participants

• Information is accessible and shared in time for all participants to properly read and understand it

• Communication between all participants is open, honest and clear

• Joint working is based on trust and mutual respect

• Participants are supported to develop their skills and confidence at all times

How community resilience is organised will vary from area to area. It will depend on what already exists locally, how many people are interested in community resilience, and the kind of impact you want to have but some examples of these are given below:[DA1] 

• Informal – friends and neighbours/Facebook buddies/Whats App groups

• Existing community groups such as Community Councils or Community Development Trust

• Formally established Community Resilience Groups

Developing Your Plan

Once you’ve identified what’s already happening and any gaps you should begin to plan out how these can be addressed.

Community Resilience Planning is a key element of what Councils, and the Emergency Services are involved in on an on-going basis. Community input to this is a vital element and many areas will have established Community Resilience Plans with direct involvement from local community groups. Once you have your local structures set up you will need to begin planning for how your community will respond to emergency situations. This should then feed into the formal Community Resilience plans which are in place. Many Councils have useful advice and templates that groups can use in developing their Community Resilience Plans. Here is an example from Aberdeenshire - Community Resilience Plan Advice Note

In addition to your contribution to the wider formal Community Resilience Plan it may be useful to develop your own local community plan for resilience. This could be about how you operate and organise locally rather than what will be done during an emergency. An example of the kind of areas that could be covered in your local plan can be seen here: Planning tables.docx

Remember, there may already be a Community Action Plan or Local Place Plan for your area – check with your local Community Council or Community Development Trust. Many community groups now undertake Community Action Plans (CAPs) and do wide ranging and creative engagement with all the people who live there – your group can make the most of these opportunities and either add some questions into the engagement or even go a step further and combine resilience planning into the CAP process. This example from South Kintyre Development Trust shows how this can be done - Campbeltown-CAP-Extended-Version.docx

The extent to which you enter into any local resilience planning will depend on the level of involvement you want to have in emergency responses, and you should bear this in mind before you get into something a bit more complex. Your local Resilience Officer should be able to help you decide on what level is most appropriate for you.

Methods

As you are going through this planning process you will need to identify the methods you will use to engage with your wider community. These may include meetings, information sessions, leaflets, social media posts, surveys (online and offline) or speaking to existing local groups.

Remember, all communities are different so you will need to choose your methods appropriately. Some people may prefer face-to-face conversations whilst others may prefer to communicate online or on social media. Most of our communities are very mixed so it is likely that you will need to use a variety of methods to make sure that you are reaching all sections of your community.

Help with community engagement should be available from your local Resilience Officer, your local Community Learning and Development Team (within the Council) or your local 3rd sector support organisation - normally known as the TSI (Third Sector Interface).

Resources

Identify what resources you may need to help you with your resilience responses. This may include:

• financial resources such as grants, generated income, donations or other fundraising

• physical resources such as equipment, vehicles or premises

• human resources such as volunteers or local workers.

In most cases you should be able to get help from a local Resilience Officer in your Council to do this. This person will also be able to advise on matters relating to Risk Assessment, Volunteer Roles, Insurance, etc.

Once you have your plan in place, or your resilience plans are included in other existing local plans you are ready to move to the next stage – preparing for emergencies.