Community Trauma Toolkit for Disasters

Staff at the Australian National University (ANU) have developed a free Community Trauma Toolkit, to help with mental health in disasters. The toolkit covers preparedness for a disaster, as well as during and after. There are resources for parents, doctors, teachers, and others. Provided are summaries, workshop materials, podcasts, and videos. As well as assisting those recovering from bushfires, these materials could be of use for educators dealing with the Novel Coronavirus. In particular there is an Educators workshop, for professional development of teachers. This has a 51 page facilitator’s handbook, 41 pages of activities, a 91 slide presenters pack (with speaker's notes)..

The toolkit is comprehensive, but there are so many materials offered to so many groups, the website is difficult to navigate. Also there appears to be no online delivery option, which will severely limit its usefulness. The materials are designed for face to face delivery, by a trainer, to professionals, who then assist the community. I suggest that the toolkit should have options for e-learning, as there may not be the time, nor resources, for face-to-face training.

An additional difficulty with the toolkit is that modifications to the toolkit are prohibited. The policy of the Australia Government, which funded the toolkit, is to use a Creative Commons license, which provided less restrictive use of materials. As an example, it would be useful to be able to modify the materials to address the current coronavirus situation.

Also I experienced a technical difficulty when attempting to view the workshop slides:  "This error has been reported to Google and we'll look into it as soon as possible. Please reload this page to continue.". W hat the error was, was not displayed.