Conference presentation
Building Community-Capacity to Support Rural Children and Young People’s Disaster-Recover, and Resilience in East Gippsland
Rural Mental Health Conference (Cairns, QLD, 06/11/2024–08/11/2024)
08/11/2024
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Abstract
Natural disasters disrupt the lives of children and young people, along with the broader community, leaving in their wake trauma and uncertainty. Beyond emergency responses, building community capacity to support children and young people’s disaster recovery is critical for their wellbeing, resilience and the sustainability of rural communities. From 2019-2024 we worked in East Gippsland and NSW communities where children and young people experienced multiple bushfire seasons, ongoing floods and storm events, drought, and COVID-19 in their critical transition years. Our work involved:
• raising awareness about children and young people’s experiences of disaster, loss, and grief
• providing evidence-based training with adults in children and young people’s lives to support children and young people to navigate the loss, change and grief associated with disaster
• building the capacity of community networks, leaders and stakeholders to support children and young people’s participation in recovery and future disaster preparedness, and
• directly supporting children and young people with evidence-based wellbeing programs.
We used developmental evaluation to explore the practices associated with CCB-DR - Community Capacity Building for children and young people’s Disaster Recovery - and the socio-ecological conditions that enabled and constrained practices.
In this session we share our work in East Gippsland rural communities, and recommendations for enhancing rural community capacity to support children and young people’s recovery and wellbeing in the wake of ongoing disasters and involve them in climate adaptation. We explore how we built on established relationships, explored need in each community, and collaborated with local schools, recovery and disaster mental health services to tailor activities that built capacity to provide evidence-based wellbeing supports in each community. Our session will include links to short video feedback from East Gippsland community members in 2023-4 and young people in southern NSW during a unique ecological grief workshop.
Three Key Learnings:
1. Adults, services and schools in children and young people’s lives don’t always considering their experiences, capabilities as distinct from the families and systems they are part of, and the importance of listening to their unique perspectives and contributions.
2. Building capacity, knowledge and awareness of adults in children and young people’s lives can make a big difference in children’s wellbeing.
3. Children and young people experience ecological grief, loss and change following disaster and we need to address this when we work in the space of recovery and resilience.
Details
- Title
- Building Community-Capacity to Support Rural Children and Young People’s Disaster-Recover, and Resilience in East Gippsland
- Creators
- Godelieve Hofman-Verkuyl - Mackillop SeasonsMeaghan Vosz - Southern Cross University
- Conference
- Rural Mental Health Conference (Cairns, QLD, 06/11/2024–08/11/2024)
- Identifiers
- 991013240312802368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts; Faculty of Health
- Resource Type
- Conference presentation