Exploring Social Workers' Experiences of Working with Bushfire-affected Families

Hickson, Helen; Lehmann, Jennifer

doi:10.1080/0312407x.2013.832788

Cited by 16 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The portion of Australian articles that focus on post-fire concerns examine a range of topics, including individual and community recovery strategies [57,58], the potential influence of Black Saturday on policy and risk management [59, 60•], and the experiences of charity organizations, volunteers, and social workers in assisting with recovery after Black Saturday [61][62][63]. However, the majority of Australian articles focus on homeowner decision-making during a fire [13,57,[64][65][66][67][68][69].…”

Section: Experiencing and Recovering From A Wildfirementioning

confidence: 99%

Community Wildfire Preparedness: a Global State-of-the-Knowledge Summary of Social Science Research

McCaffrey

2015

Curr Forestry Rep

158

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This article builds on findings from a synthesis of fire social science research that was published from 2000 to 2010 to understand what has been learned more recently about public response to wildfires. Two notable changes were immediately noted in the fairly substantial number of articles published between 2011 and 2014. First, while over 90 % of the articles found in the initial synthesis were US-based studies, roughly half of the articles published since 2010 have been conducted outside the USA, the majority from Australia. Second, while the primary focus of earlier studies was on pre-fire mitigation efforts on both public and private lands, roughly half of the recent articles focused on dynamics during and after a fire. Overall, findings from the current review re-enforce key themes identified in the previous synthesis work and provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how certain variables, such as risk perception, may influence public response to wildfires. In addition, several important dynamics emerged across studies: the similarity of findings across countries, increased work across the temporal gradient, the importance of social interactions and of place attachment in shaping response, the need to take local knowledge and context into account, and the importance of financial support. These patterns suggest that while no single outreach approach or policy is likely to be effective everywhere or for everyone, efforts that facilitate development of relationships, within communities and between community members and fire personnel, can contribute to increased preparedness at the individual and community level by facilitating information exchange and helping to build a sense of community.

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Section: Experiencing and Recovering From A Wildfirementioning

confidence: 99%

Community Wildfire Preparedness: a Global State-of-the-Knowledge Summary of Social Science Research

McCaffrey

2015

Curr Forestry Rep

158

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“…Common elements include counselling, social assistance, crisis intervention, solutionbased therapeutic approaches, advocacy, mediation, problem-solving, and cross sector collaboration. Important roles for counsellors may be operationalising new or emergency services, managing day-to-day interventions with necessary systems and structures or social development strategies (Du Plooy et al, 2014;Hickson & Lehmann, 2014;van Heugten, 2014). Many research discussions noted a simultaneous commitment to community engagement and empowerment in both short-term and longer-term delivery (Du Plooy et al, 2014;Hickson & Lehmann, 2014;Javadian, 2007;Manning et al, 2007).…”

Section: Professional Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers from the Asia Pacific region noted the importance of personal characteristics in working post disaster commenting that not every disaster worker has the necessary personal attributes. Important personal characteristics include a willingness to deal with the unexpected (Yanay and Benjamin 2005); resilience and energy (Manning et al 2007); and capacity to respond to chaotic workplaces (Hickson and Lehmann 2014).…”

Section: Professional Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Postdisaster Counselling: Personal, Professional, and Ethical Issues

Cooper

Briggs

Bagshaw

2018

Australian Social Work

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This paper examines the experiences of specialist volunteer mental health counsellors establishing and managing an early intervention service. This research investigates personal, professional and ethical issues faced by volunteer counsellors following the 2011 earthquakes in the Canterbury region of New Zealand. Earthquakes create major community disruption resulting in scarce resources requiring new agency arrangements and increased use of volunteers to manage and provide services. Volunteer counsellors working with the Canterbury Charity Hospital were interviewed about the personal, professional, and ethical issues they faced in providing early intervention services. The earthquake exposed counsellors to personal challenges in their own lives as well as those of their clients and significantly affected their professional practice. The findings indicate that emergency organizations and professional registration bodies should give further consideration to the management of volunteers and their early intervention work in post-disaster counselling. Implications • Delivery of post disaster services must encompass service management, targeted interventions and supervision.• When counsellors and clients experience the same disaster personal, professional and ethical aspects are intertwined. Counsellors need self-care and support to manage these events.• Further enhancement of professional insurance is sought for volunteer counsellors post disaster.

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“…There are plenty of examples of social work involvement in disaster response and recovery in both the developing and the developed world: Australian drought (Alston, ) and bushfires (Du Plooy, Harms, Muir, Martin & Ingliss, ; Hickson & Lehmann, ), Hurricane Katrina in the United States (Bell, Madden, Borah, Lein & Beausoleil, ), earthquake in Iran (Aghabakhshi & Gregor, ) and the SARS Crisis in Hong Kong (Leung & Wong, ) are examples of scenes for social work disaster response. Even though there are plenty of examples of disaster social work and guidelines for preparedness (e.g., Rowlands, , ; Scharoun & Dziegielewski, ; Wodarski, ), their involvement in preparedness planning is still unclear and poorly studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of Social Services’ Disaster Risk Management: Case Finland

Rapeli

2017

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

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Local actors are crucial in disaster risk management; thus, their capacities should be assessed periodically. In this study, local social services’ preparedness plans were assessed using Emergency Management Program Measurement and quantitative document analysis. The specific aim was to study how social service areas of various sizes were prepared for disasters in Finland. The results showed that disaster risk management capacity varied significantly between large and small service areas. Larger areas were better prepared for supporting management, and had better procedures to activate their response, modern public information and deeper cooperation with the private sector and the civil society. The differences might derive from the fact that large areas have more resources allocated to disaster risk management.

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Exploring Social Workers' Experiences of Working with Bushfire-affected Families

Cited by 16 publications

References 21 publications

Community Wildfire Preparedness: a Global State-of-the-Knowledge Summary of Social Science Research

Community Wildfire Preparedness: a Global State-of-the-Knowledge Summary of Social Science Research

Postdisaster Counselling: Personal, Professional, and Ethical Issues

Assessment of Social Services’ Disaster Risk Management: Case Finland

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