Red Cross Community Support Training Day

Last Saturday a group of intrepid community members braved the wild weather to take part in a training day delivered by Red Cross. Two senior trainers – Liz Cater and Valerie Hussain – led the program. The Psychological First Aid (PFA) course aims to build the skills of community members ready to support others during emergencies. Two participants – Jennifer Atfield and Jim Joy – have just completed their on-boarding to become fully fledged members of the local Red Cross Emergency Support Team.

To become part of the team, Jennifer and Jim had to complete the rigorous pre-training program involving police checks, two online modules about emergency management and introductory PFA, then attend the one-day skills course. Both sailed through and are now officially members of the local team.

The training was opened up to other people who support the community in disaster situations including members of the St John Ambulance team, teaching staff, and local Fijian community. Throughout the training day, we held good conversations about how to build better cohesion between local services involved in emergency management. Some ideas included doing practical projects such as mapping locations of vulnerable people who would need assistance in case of a major emergency such as cyclones, using international tools for assessing safety and suitability for evacuation centres on Norfolk Island, and strengthening community preparedness for events such as climate change. Red Cross has well-established programs for a range of preparedness activities and the local team will be rolling these out as we build our team.

With the support of Red Cross NSW, the local team is currently re-branding so we focus more on community engagement to play a more active role in helping the community become better prepared and resilient in the face of the unique stressors we face here. We will continue to train our Emergency Support Volunteers, but will expand the way in which local people can join Red Cross as some don’t want to go through the full training and will just complete the PFA Training to join as Community Engagement Volunteers. This change also gives us more scope to focus on community preparedness which is a vital role for Red Cross.

To find out more about our local Red Cross Volunteers Team please call Kate Lemerle (Team Convenor) on 52112 or email bushtucka@iinet.net.au