Disaster preparedness in social work: Enhancing policy in Australian human service organisations

This paper reports on a small study that aimed to enhance disaster preparedness policy inAustralian human service organisations. Adopting a transformative ecosocial lens, theresearchers collaborated with emergency services as part of action research to co-design aseries of workshops. Objectives of the workshops were to progressively develop disasterpreparedness policy relating to risk assessment, service continuity, and recovery plans. Semistructuredinterviews with eight participants from human service organisations wereundertaken post-workshop to explore their experiences and the impacts of workshops onorganisational policy. Qualitative data was examined using thematic analysis. Five keythemes emerged from the data. The themes were knowledge acquisition, interrelationshipbetween policy and practice, inter- and intra-professional relationships, organisationalchallenges, and marginalisation. While results indicated that workshops providedparticipants with opportunities to enhance disaster preparedness policy, participants describedongoing challenges inhibiting their progress within an organisational context. Implicationsfor social work highlight the interrelationship between policy and practice and underscore thevalue of the profession’s multidimensional approach to practice. The need to disrupt theinfluence of the neoliberal discourse within the organisational context is critical forenhancing disaster preparedness and for mitigating the inequitable impacts of disasters onmarginalised groups.