Emergency-Ready For Summer
Summer in Australia brings heatwaves, bushfires, storms and power outages, often in the same weeks that holiday leave thins out the team. For NDIS providers, the useful question isn't whether something will disrupt services this season. It's whether your people know exactly what to do when it does.
What the NDIS Commission expects
Emergency and disaster management is part of the NDIS Practice Standards. The NDIS Commission describes it as the planning providers need to prepare for, prevent, manage and respond to emergencies and disasters, while reducing risks to participants and keeping the supports that are critical to their health, safety and wellbeing running. Source: NDIS Commission, NDIS Practice Standards.
Four checks before the season starts
1. Review your plan against this summer. Check that your emergency and disaster management plan still reflects your current services, sites and participants. A plan written a few years ago may not cover a new location or a new type of support.
2. Know which supports can't pause. Identify the participants and supports that need to continue no matter what, such as medication, personal care and mealtime support, and agree how each one will keep going if staff, power or transport are disrupted.
3. Brief the whole team. Make sure frontline workers know where the plan lives, who to call and what to do first. A short toolbox talk before the holidays is often all it takes.
4. Check your communication channels. Confirm current contact details for participants, families and workers, and agree how you'll reach people if phones or internet go down.
A quick pre-summer checklist
Emergency and disaster plan reviewed and dated
Critical supports and participants identified
Backup staff and contacts confirmed for the holiday period
Workers briefed on the plan
Participant contact details and support plans up to date
Local emergency alerts set up for each site
Plan for the most likely disruptions
Think about the disruptions your services are most likely to face this summer. Extreme heat can affect participants' wellbeing and workers travelling between visits. Power outages can affect equipment, medication storage and communication. Road closures can stop workers reaching participants. For each one, agree a simple response: who checks on whom, what the backup is, and when to escalate.
After an event, review and update
When a disruption does happen, take time afterwards to review how the plan held up. What worked, what was slower than expected, and what should change? Record the review, update the plan and let the team know what's different. Each review makes the plan more useful for the next time.
If you'd like a second set of eyes on how ready your systems are for the season, our free Impact Assessment is a good place to start. Book your free Impact Assessment.
