Put in place emergency and disaster management plans.

Develop emergency and disaster management plans. This helps to reduce risks to the health, safety, and wellbeing* of older people and workers.

Make sure emergency and disaster management plans:

• are based on an emergency and disaster risk assessment. This assessment identifies emergency and disaster situations that can happen when delivering care and services. These can include environmental events or disasters, such as floods, heatwaves, fires, and damage to infrastructure. This can also include medical emergencies. The risk assessment also helps assess how you and your workers need to respond to manage these situations. Make sure you do the emergency and disaster risk assessment as part of the organisation’s broader risk assessment (Outcome 2.4).
  • in residential care, the emergency plan applies to all older people and workers. The plan describes how the organisation and workers will respond to an emergency or disaster and how you will manage risks. The plan also considers extra supports that each older person may need. You need to communicate these extra supports to workers so they can act appropriately in an emergency.
  • in home care, the emergency plan needs to address the older person and the home care environment. It may be helpful to complete risk assessments for home care in regional and remote communities with local services from the area. This may also help you find ways to share resources during an emergency. Local services can understand particular risks that others may not (Outcome 4.1a). For example, high kangaroo activity on a road may be a risk to the worker when travelling, or a road may be more likely to flood. There can also be higher risks for those who don’t have access to transport in areas at risk of bushfires, heatwaves or floods. Use your incident management* and risk management systems* in this process* to identify and manage these situations (Outcomes 2.4 and 2.5).
• are based on the service context. Use the emergency risk assessment to decide if you need an emergency and disaster management plan specific to the service. This depends on the context of the organisation. Sometimes a high-level plan can be enough. For example, in home care, a high-level plan can be enough if there is a broader risk assessment for each home setting (Outcome 4.1a). The broad risk assessment for each home setting needs to assess any particular challenges in emergency responses. For example, during heatwaves and in flood prone areas.
• include strategies for communication and management planning during an emergency
• are developed in consultation with older people, their family, carers, workers, visitors and other response services. This makes sure the processes meet older people’s needs (Outcomes 2.1 and 1.1). Make sure strategies are included in a person’s care and services plan*s if needed. For example, where an older person has a disability or culturally diverse needs that may need to be considered during an emergency.
• are shared with older people and their families in a variety of ways. This can be by displaying the plans on noticeboards or email alerts (Outcomes 2.2 and 3.3). Make sure this information is shared in a way the older person understands (Outcome 1.3). Consider each older person’s language and communication needs and preferences (Outcome 1.1).
• tested on a periodic basis. For example, once a year. Use a variety of different emergency scenarios in your emergency drill schedule. If you find any issues through these tests, review and update the emergency plans. Issues can include workers not being sure what to do. Drills need to be done with workers, older people, their families and carers, visitors and other response partners (Outcome 2.1). These can be desktop drills. This will help to reduce disruption to older people. These drills can also include scenarios like power and internet outages.
• are evaluated and updated. After a drill, or if a real emergency happens, assess the responses and emergency plan to check if they worked well. Make changes if needed.
• include processes to respond quickly to outbreaks of infectious diseases. You need to do this even if the disease is only suspected (Outcome 4.2). You can develop an outbreak management plan.

Note: Response partners can include:

• government agencies
• the state emergency service
• other service providers
• community organisations local health services
• local public health units.

Make sure your workers have the time, support and resources to use emergency and disaster management plans.

Put in place a workforce* strategy (Outcome 2.8) that considers:

• transitions of care* (Outcome 3.4)
• continuity of care (Outcome 3.4)
• assessing workers’ abilities during the hiring process* (Outcome 2.8)
• additional staff or workforce* supports that may be needed during an emergency (Outcome 2.9)
• providing workers with guidance and training on their roles and responsibilities* in an emergency or disaster.

Guidance and training needs to be in line with:

• the organisation’s policies* and procedures*
• workers’ roles and responsibilities*.

The guidance for Outcomes 2.8 and 2.9 has more information on workforce* planning and human resource management.

Monitor how well your emergency and disaster management plans are working.

To make sure emergency and disaster management plans are working well, you can:

• talk with workers, older people, their families and carers
• assess emergency and disaster drill records.

You can also review:

• complaints* and feedback* (Outcome 2.6)
• risk and incident* information (Outcomes 2.4 and 2.5)
• policies* and procedures*.

Review your emergency plans and update them if needed. This will help to make sure your emergency plans stay current and effective. For example, review your plan:

• if you move or renovate
• if the number of older people in your care changes significantly
• if your workforce changes significantly
• after you do an emergency management drill
• after an emergency.

If you find any issues or ways you can improve, address them. If things go wrong, be open about it. Share what went wrong with workers, older people, their family and carers (Outcome 2.3). Put in place strategies to mitigate the risk of things going wrong again.

The guidance for Outcome 2.3 has more information on monitoring the quality system*.