FLOOD AWARENESS AND PREPAREDNESS WORKSHOPS FOR RESIDENTIAL AGED CARE SERVICES

Two whole day workshops were delivered between March and September 2019 to managers and key staff at Residential Aged Care services in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley floodplain. The workshops were designed to improve the local flood risk knowledge of these services and support their capacity to plan and prepare for natural disasters, particularly flood.

Over 20 attendees from 15 residential aged care services attended these workshops which included briefings from NSW State Emergency Service, NSW Health, NSW Ambulance, Regional Emergency Management Coordinato,r and the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Risk Management Directorate.

These workshops were provided for the aged care services at risk of flood within the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley. The workshops focussed key aspects of best-practice emergency planning for flood, including:

• triggers and responses
• roles and responsibilities
• contingencies for different scenarios
• communications before and during a flood with residents and their families
• Identifying actions to initiate and undertake a managed evacuation of the facility, including prioritising residents and arranging transport.

Workshops included a scenario-based exercise, allowing residential aged care centres to practice their plans against realistic flood scenarios. This emphasised contingency planning to ensure continuity of service delivery for aged care residents, including the development of procedures for relocating their residents to facilities outside of the floodplain.

These workshops were an initiative of the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Risk Management Strategy, delivered as a partnership between Infrastructure NSW and the Nepean Blue Mountains District Health Service - NSW Health.