Emerging Minds portal

One of the groups in our community who we know have particular needs after disasters are children.

In the not so distant past, there was a prevailing idea that children and young people weren’t affected by traumatic events, and that the best course of action was to not mention it to them for fear of upsetting them. We now know that this is not the case, and both research and practice have done a 180 turn on the best approaches to support children after a big upheaval.

Despite this, it’s pretty common for emergency services practitioners to feel like they aren’t qualified to talk about (or to!) children, or be involved in the planning for their needs after a disaster.

Emerging Minds is an organisation that has been around for more than 20 years and is dedicated to advancing the mental health needs of infants, children and young people. They work in partnership with a host of orgsanisations to improve outcomes for the younger people in our communities.

Emerging Minds has a resource portal that is massive, but they’ve made it easier to navigate by breaking all of the information into sections (e.g. Community Trauma) and then split it again to target audiences (e.g. GPs, Emergency Service workers).

Two of the sections you might want to check out are the Bushfires, Drought and Community Trauma page and the Community Trauma toolkit. There are a bunch of fact sheets, written resources and podcast episodes. You can both use them to upskill yourself and your team, but also to disseminate to communities you may be assisting.

If you’re someone who knows that supporting children and young people is part of your broader remit but feel a bit daunted by the task, don’t panic. There is loads of information out there and a big group of professionals who want to make your life easier and are there to help.

Check out the Emerging Minds portal here.