Community Resilience Workshop (Bristol)
by Charlie Edwards
The main thing that struck me was just how many organisations and institutions are involved in emergency planning and resilience work (though they wouldn't probably brand it as such). It's a point I made in a talk I gave on The Self Resilient Society in Australia over the summer. In short there is huge potential in the UK but lots of (not insurmountable) barriers to making that potential a reality.
But what's so interesting is that these individuals and organisations seem to have been forgotten or ignored by politicians in Westminster. All three political parties have argued for the return of a civil defence force/network.
The Conservative Shadow Minister Dame Pauline has said that at present the country is ill-prepared, and that it needs a dedicated organization to deal with such events... a dedicated, organization separate from the military and the existing voluntary responders. Such an organization should be entirely secular and apolitical, able to reflect each community it represents.
Meanwhile Nick Clegg believes we need to re-establish some form of civil defence organisation. It must be community-based, community-led and engage people. I want to explore how we get people to learn skills to serve their community, and share the skills they have, so when emergencies happen, from flooding to terrorism, it isn't just a small, professional elite who step up, it's everyone.
Finally, in his speech on national security, the Prime Minister Gordon Gordon Brown suggested the Government would aim to establish a new civil defence force, involving individuals and families, to help protect the nation from a range of 21st-century security threats and natural disasters.
My advice would be for all three Ministers to go and visit somewhere like Frampton-on-Severn and listen to how the community are planning for emergencies. To give you a head start read the Parish Council minutes from February (point 22/08).
In short, arguing for a civil defence force is just a bit too easy and is a reflection of political posturing rather than based on any evidence of what is happening on the ground. It's also the wrong approach. Instead our starting point should to recognise the dense but often invisible network of individuals and organisations that criss-cross the country. After all in an emergency they will come.
Nigel Furlong
I was at the workshop and in the syndicate I was in we advocated that community resilience started with giving kids life skills at school such as being able to cook, to do first aid, what to do in a fire at home and so on. One suggestion was to introduce resilience topics into the national curriculum such as giving kids a homework project to develop a family emergency plan. A strategy could be to align organisations such as schools, the Duke of Edniburgh Award Scheme, the Scout Organisation and the three cadet forces all to have resilience elements in their activities and in that way resilience would be imbedded at the grass routes of a community.