When your community is ready, the community recovery group (CRG) supported by local council, Emergency Recovery Victoria (ERV) and others as needed, should engage with local community members and relevant interest groups to identify recovery priorities and the outcomes the community wants to achieve. It is important to ensure all community values, cultures and perspectives are considered through this process.
This section provides guidance on setting community recovery priorities, including:
- reflecting diverse community voices and views
- various engagement methods to help identify recovery priorities
- developing a community recovery plan.
Five things to consider when preparing for community recovery
- Identify your community’s diverse values, cultures and perspectives. How will you consider them as part of this process?
- Identify any community planning work done prior to the disaster that you can build on as part of your recovery planning – you don’t need to start from scratch. The emergency may have disrupted the original plan but it may also have opened up opportunities.
- Consider short, medium and long term-priorities, not just immediate needs.
- Remember: recovery priorities need to be your community’s priorities, not government priorities.
- Identify the support or guidance your CRG needs from local government, ERV or others. Consider community mentors, community psychologists, facilitators to help relieve administrative burden.
Various engagement methods to help identify recovery priorities
Finding the right engagement approach for the right purpose is crucial to effective engagement. Your CRG will probably need to use a range of engagement methods to take all voices into account when identifying recovery needs and priorities.
For very small communities it might be appropriate to use less formal engagement methods such as gathering input door-to-door, whereas for larger communities a more involved approach may be more appropriate. Below are some engagement options your CRG may wish to consider.
Reflecting diverse community voices and views
It is important that all community values, cultures and perspectives are considered in the recovery planning process.
Reflecting diverse community views means engaging and listening to as many voices as possible, including people from different localities, people of various ages, gender and population groups (for example, youth, CALD communities) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly Traditional Owners.
Communities of interest may also emerge depending on the nature and scale of the impact and these voices need to be heard as well. Communities of interest can include tourism operators, primary industries, farming communities and others.
Some members of affected communities may face barriers to inclusion in consultation, for example they may be socially isolated, have low literacy or have a disability that prevents attendance or limits participation at meetings.
To ensure that your recovery plan has considered all views and voices in your community, your community recovery group should consider using a range of engagement methods.
Some of these might involve using a combination of online and face-to-face meetings, holding meetings on neutral grounds, at different times, or using an independent facilitator to surface insights from diverse community groups.
The following questions can help to ensure specific groups and communities of interest are included in the recovery planning process:
- What specific groups can be identified for our community (consider maximising inclusion and diversity)?
- How can we engage with the identified groups? How can we ensure they are part of our community’s recovery planning process?
- What stakeholders can assist with engaging these specific groups in the recovery planning process?
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