Councils in South Australia and in Victoria have won awards in this year’s Australian Safer Communities awards, presented by the
Attorney-General Robert McClelland in Canberra earlier this month.
The winner of the first award, for an emergency related project involving a group of councils, was the collective of councils in South Australia. They include Mitcham, Unley, Marion, Holdfast Bay, West Torrens and Adelaide councils, with the South Australian State Emergency Service (SES) as the coordinating agency.
The winner of the second award went to Victoria – for the single council category for this year – it was the City of Greater Geelong council.
In presenting the coveted awards Mr McClelland said: “In this 10th year of these national awards, I am again impressed with the initiative, quality and innovation that is so clearly evident with all the entries in this year’s awards.
“The dedication and commitment of the project teams responsible is quite evident. They have identified real needs in the community and gone about devising ways to help their local residents be safer and more secure when an emergency comes upon them.”
Community FloodSafe Project is collective success
The combined councils project linked the SA SES with the Adelaide councils to take flood education and preparedness messages into local flood risk communities. It empowers residents and businesses to protect their own families, workers and properties during emergencies, and enhances community resilience and speeds the return to normal life after a flooding event.
Thirty-two SES rescue trained volunteers have been given presentation skills training to teach awareness information about flooding prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, along with flood mapping and local flood history data.
FloodSafe messages are being presented to community meetings held in high risk streets, at local service clubs and at community events.
In four months of this year some 80 community sessions and activities have been held across the six council areas. The project will be expanded across northern metropolitan Adelaide in the near future.
SafeStart reduces impact of childhood injuries
The winning Geelong SafeStart project has been specifically designed to reduce the incidence and impact of childhood injuries and improve safety for all children throughout the community, through the development and implementation of a range of locally created strategies and intervention activities.
The project has been a collaboration between the City of Greater Geelong and the Public Health Branch of the Victorian Department of Human Services.
Among the features of the strategy are:
- development of systems to enhance local capacity to
respond to injury issues - improve local knowledge of the risks, barriers and enablers
associated with childhood injury - research and evaluate specific interventions at a local
community level - increase the awareness of the importance of a whole of
Local Government approach to injury prevention.
Early indications are that the project has been instrumental in reducing the overall incidence of childhood injury, whilst promoting a strong focus throughout the community to support new measures to prevent children’s exposure to safety hazards and risks in the home and in the community.
Wide representation of entries
Fourteen projects from across all states took winner and highly commended awards in this year’s national Safer Communities Awards that are promoted by the Federal Attorney-General’s Department.
Altogether, 75 projects were entered. They cover emergency related projects conducted by State, Federal and Local Governments, non government emergency related organisations, volunteer groups and private enterprise. Details of all winners and a full listing of entrants
can be found on the Emergency Management in Australia website at www.ema.gov.au
