Suchergebnisse

In 2013, the Blue Mountains region of NSW experienced devastating bushfires. In response, the Step By Step Blue Mountains Bushfire Support Service was established by the Ministry of Police and Emergency Services and a local Blue Mountains service, Gateway Family Support. The service was to support bushfire-affected community members through a strengthsbased and solution-focused approach. This approach has been used in other support services but limited evidence exists on the effectiveness of its use in disaster recovery. The integration of research in the early stages of disaster recovery service design may prove a valuable way to support the work of governments and service delivery organisations and is an important aspect of disaster preparedness and community wellbeing. This paper highlights the vulnerability of the Blue Mountains region to bushfire and examines the 2013 response by the Ministry for Police and Emergency Services Disaster Welfare Service (DWS) in association with Gateway Family Services. The DWS and Gateway Family Services collaborated to implement the service. This paper concludes that support services should be flexible in their response to dealing with those recovering from traumatic experiences such as bushfires. It demonstrates that evaluation of existing disaster support programs could better inform future disaster responses and services to assist communities to better cope and rebuild their lives.

In 2013, the Blue Mountains region of NSW experienced devastating bushfires. In response, the Step By Step Blue Mountains Bushfire Support Service was established by the Ministry of Police and Emergency Services and a local Blue Mountains service, Gateway Family Support. The service was to support bushfire-affected community members through a strengths-based and solution-focused approach. This approach has been used in other support services but limited evidence exists on the effectiveness of its use in disaster recovery. The integration of research in the early stages of disaster recovery service design may prove a valuable way to support the work of governments and service delivery organisations and is an important aspect of disaster preparedness and community wellbeing. This paper highlights the vulnerability of the Blue Mountains region to bushfire and examines the 2013 response by the Ministry for Police and Emergency Services Disaster Welfare Service (DWS) in association with Gateway Family Services. The DWS and Gateway Family Services collaborated to implement the service. This paper concludes that support services should be flexible in their response to dealing with those recovering from traumatic experiences such as bushfires. It demonstrates that evaluation of existing disaster support programs could better inform future disaster responses and services to assist communities to better cope and rebuild their lives.

Increasing concerns about global environmental change and food security have focused attention on the need for environmentally sustainable agriculture. This is agriculture that makes efficient use of natural resources and does not degrade the environmental systems that underpin it, or deplete natural capital stocks. We convened a group of 29 'practitioners' and 17 environmental scientists with direct involvement or expertise in the environmental sustainability of agriculture. The practitioners included representatives from UK industry, non-government organizations and government agencies. We collaboratively developed a long list of 264 knowledge needs to help enhance the environmental sustainability of agriculture within the UK or for the UK market. We refined and selected the most important knowledge needs through a three-stage process of voting, discussion and scoring. Scientists and practitioners identified similar priorities. We present the 26 highest priority knowledge needs. Many of them demand integration of knowledge from different disciplines to inform policy and practice. The top five are about sustainability of livestock feed, trade-offs between ecosystem services at farm or landscape scale, phosphorus recycling and metrics to measure sustainability. The outcomes will be used to guide on-going knowledge exchange work, future science policy and funding.