E5
– Suggested Organisation of an Emergency Rest Centre
Crisis Management team
F5– Activation sheet
G5– Activation example
H5 – Sample Log Sheet
5.1.
Due
to the potential welfare needs of people involved in major incidents, it is
very likely that social services will have a role to play early on. This may
even be before the involvement of the emergency services and extending well
beyond the withdrawal of other services.
Social services thus needs to evolve effective management structures
to deliver what is required as the major incident unfolds. Their efforts
need to be appropriate to the needs of emergency services and other relevant
organisations. This can only be achieved through liaison designed to secure the
co-ordination and integration of social services department functions,
within the larger local authority and emergency services plans.
The Routine Stage:
5.2.
During this stage
the main activities are:
Liaison
Planning
Training
Exercising
Updating
Liaison:
Co-ordination
is the cornerstone of an efficient response and liaison makes co-ordination
possible. Most liaison should take
place before a major incident
occurs. –‘Dealing
with Disaster’ commends the establishment of a Strategic Co-ordinating Group in each area to provide a high level
co-ordination of the relevant organisations. It will normally be a police
responsibility to establish and chair the Group. The membership would
usually include a nominated senior member from each statutory agency
involved in the response. Each
member must be able to make executive decisions in respect of resolutions
within their agency and have the authority to seek the aid of other agencies
in support of their role. The
Strategic Co-ordinating Group provides the focus for communication to
and from the Lead Government department and would usually be located at
Police Headquarters or a pre–planned location away from the disaster area.
The objective is to build up a detailed, mutual understanding of the roles
and functions of all the organisations which could be involved in a major
incident and to build an appropriate liaison and communication at all stages
of mutual operation.
Planning:
Not
only provides for the functions outlined under liaison, it also seeks to put
in place organisational structures, which will enable the procurement and
management of departmental resources.
Training:
Lays
out the roles tasks and functions, additional knowledge and skills required
during a major incident. (See section 11). The objective of training is to
actualise policy as that has been defined through liaison and planning
processes.
Exercising:
Brings
planning and training to life in a way that can’t be reproduced by any
other means (short of a real emergency). Details can be modified and
shortcomings ironed out at relatively low cost. “Paper” exercises and
those concentrating on particular aspects of the plan (e.g. communications)
are valuable but full activation of the plan is most beneficial! A plan
cannot be said to be complete until it has been rigorously tested in a full
rehearsal. The objects of
exercising are:
·
to demonstrate that the plan will work
·
to build confidence in it
·
to discover and rectify shortcomings
·
to reinforce training through experience
Updating:
Takes
place following from exercises, new directives or arrangements. It is
particularly important to update contact and resource lists. The objective
of updating is to maintain a live plan, which will work at any moment,
despite the many changes departments undergo. It is essential that an
officer has overall responsibility for Co-ordinating;
this involves overseeing
the development and maintenance of the plan. The tasks of liaison, planning,
training, exercising and updating may require a small task force of officers
to share the load. It could be
useful to include in job descriptions, some of the tasks and functions
needed in planning and running responses to major incidents.
The Pre-Impact Stage
5.3.
Effort is directed at the containment of the situation and an
avoidance of the crisis stage. The local authority may be directing
operations (e.g. flooding). In other circumstances (e.g. contamination of
food) decision-making is likely to rest with a Government Department. Where
there is an active crisis, when lives need to be saved, people moved or
rescued, the police assume command (unless fire fighting or rescue is
required in which case the Fire Service takes over until completion of the
task).
Irrespective of where the ultimate command function lies the SSD
operates under the authority of the Chief Executive, through liaison with
the Local Authority Emergency Centre (unless other arrangements have been
agreed in advance.
The Crisis Stage:
5.4.
In the crisis stage the main activities are:
·
Stand-by Activation
·
Resource management
·
Management and
liaison
Stand-by
Activation
The
principle of ONE point contact should be adopted for each authority. This
means that the alerting message should usually come from that source to
social services, thus preventing confusion (this fits with the cascade
principle). The police would normally contact the local authority and the
local authority point of contact is usually the Emergency Planning Officer
who will pass the message on to key services. If one of these is Social
Services then the departmental Duty Manager receiving the response will in
effect be the Contact
Officer for the immediate emergency phase. This means that the
officer has to:
·
initiate a log and ensure that sufficient information is received
about the overall situation
·
the nature of the tasks that may be required
·
the location of the rendezvous point and where a specified route may
be taken to the same.
Officers
need to take responsibility for resources, which consist of
·
Physical and personnel resources (other than admin
·
Information, communication and admin resources
The
Co-ordinator heads up a small team of officers who together have
responsibility for:
·
activation
·
resources (physical and informational)
·
clerical support
The
allocation of roles within the team will depend on local needs and
resources. His team is in effect the Major Incident Management Team (MIM Team) and the officers involved
have the following priority tasks:
a.
to assimilate
information about the emergency thus enabling
decisions to be made within pre-agreed areas of responsibility;
b.
to consider whether extra unanticipated developments justify a social
services response;
c.
to ensure liaison to attain these ends;
d.
to liaise with and make reports to elected members;
e.
to liaise with the Social Services Inspectorate;
f.
to task officers to provide information and resources as required;
g.
to consider if a multi-authority
response is required;
h.
to
consider whether the MIM Team needs to add more officers, perhaps with
specialist skills/knowledge (for instance interpreter skills);
i.
to
define objectives and arrange briefing meetings to transmit these quickly
and effectively to operational staff;
j.
to monitor the operation of the response and its impact on other
services;
k.
to consider whether the activation of Networking is required;
l.
to record all significant events and decisions by means of personal
logs and minutes of meetings.
Resource
Management
Activation
calls for an immediate deployment of resources, all such requests and
deployments should be logged. It is important to note that adequate
records of action taken will be required in the event of legal investigation
such as an official Inquiry. The task should be managed by the MIM Team
(unless the situation demands rapid deployment – for instance the Police
may require immediate access to rest centres). Officers need to be identified who will take responsibility for
obtaining resources, in effect Social Services is viewed as a resource pool
– as in normal times – so special plans need only be made if
normal arrangements are not sufficient. If special plans are needed they
should be made in an order of priority compatible with creating a coherent
departmental plan.
The
planning objective
is to identify the contact /source which can be relied upon to provide all necessary
resources. This contact would usually be an officer who normally has
responsibility resources in the organisational structure. The relevant
officers must then decide:
a.
Access arrangements – especially during the silent hours;
b.
Whether they
retain responsibility for emergency resource provision;
c.
Whether
they should delegate;
d.
Whether
extraordinary provision needs to be made and what the implications of this
are.
Liaison
During the period of
crisis the command structure and the nature of liaison contacts and tasks
required, may pass through three phases:
a.
In the Emergency phase –
during which the police are in command – liaison will be through the Local
Authority Emergency Centre. (See
Annex for an organisational
diagram of the suggested organisation of an emergency centre crisis
management team)
(Note:
there
is no function at the incident scene of Forward Control Post for local
authority staff, unless called forward to assist with the operations).
b.
In the Recovery phase the
Chief Executive will be in command leading the Strategic Co-ordinating
Group. They need not be located at the Emergency Centre and can meet as an
when required;
c.
The
rehabilitation phase begins as the effort concerned with the repair of
physical environment withdraws, leaving the personal and social support of
the victims as the predominant task. The task is directed by the team
responsible for Welfare Co-ordination, chaired by the Director of Social
Services.
Recovery
5.5.
This
is the longer-term phase lasting possibly as long as two years, depending on
the nature and the scale of the crisis. As an initial phase of emergency
intervention to secure the welfare and safety of victims recedes the tasks
of the longer-term rehabilitation phase begin to predominate. Measures taken in this
phase will be deliberate and aimed at the medium to long term. During this
phase the main activities are:
·
Assessment
·
Resource procurement
·
Information and publicity
·
Welfare support and advice
·
Counselling
Assessment:
The
work of the SSD Core Crisis Team (who provide a rapid initial response to a major incident)
will continue into this phase. Although much of their work will focus on
supporting and enabling victims to come to terms with their experience, a
major aspect will also involve recording, assessing and quantifying the size
of the problem – vital for planning for the longer term. Recruitment and
training for the longer term should be left until this time, as pre training
for this phase would be wasteful unless the exact characteristics of the
problems and affected population are known.
Information
and publicity:
See Section 8: Information,
Communications and the Media
Resource
Procurement:
This
will continue via the MIM Team
Welfare
Support and Advice:
Counselling:
This
is dealt with in detail in Section 7: Staff Care and
Consultancy and Section 15:1 Helplines.
5.6.
Elected Members
Elected
members need to be informed of the names and contact numbers of key officers
of the MIM Team and the leader of the Core
Crisis Team (i.e. rapid initial response team). Where an Emergency
Committee of the Elected Members is established, Members need to be:
·
kept informed and consulted;
·
to raise the political will and support;
·
Provide political momentum to direct resources from other
authorities;
·
Provide approval for expenditure;
·
Take action on behalf of the authority
Such
a Committee may include members
with Social Services responsibility. Depending on each Local Authority’s
procedures members may be involved in decisions regarding the release of
extra emergency. But decisions about setting up a Disaster Fund will be
taken be the Chief Executive and Leader of the Council taking account of the
extent of casualties, public reaction and the availability of unofficial
funds. In the event of a telephone help line being established members need
to be informed of it’s number immediately in case they have to deal with
the press or public.
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