The Emergency Services Foundation (ESF) is a Victorian not-for-profit organization established after Ash Wednesday in 1987 in response to the deaths of 14 CFA volunteer firefighters. Police Chief Mick Miller, who led the investigation into those fires, was disturbed to learn that the families of the deceased were not granted any sort of recompense. He approached the State Government for funds to create a Foundation with the purpose to provide the next of kin of anyone who died in the line of duty a sum of money. It was not large, but it was enough to cover funeral costs and ease the burden of other immediate debts. Most importantly it was paid within a few days and often the recipient had no idea where it came from. Alongside these payments ESF also instigated an annual scholarship programme, which has enabled more than 70 Victorian emergency service workers to undertake a study tour to better understand hazards that impact on the safety and wellbeing of people working in front-line roles, with the most recent study topic being compassion fatigue.
Times change and so too has the working environment. Thankfully over the years greater awareness and emphasis on physical safety meant the prevalence of deaths has diminished. In conjunction with this, workers’ compensation payments have significantly increased and extended to volunteers. Six years ago, the ESF Board determined that a strategic review was required to understand the place of the Foundation in the contemporary emergency management system.
I was appointed at that time to undertake the review and for the first time the Foundation sought the views of a diverse range of stakeholders. This informed the recommendation that ESF could have an important role in bringing the sector together to collectively tackle the emerging occupational health and safety challenge that was the mental health of emergency service workers.
This was timely because it coincided with the release of Beyond Blue’s Answering the Call Report,1 which drew on feedback from close to 22,000 respondents to provide for the first time a very clear and alarming picture of the mental wellbeing of police and emergency service workers nationwide. And it was not a pretty picture. The absence of national data up to this point created challenges in understanding the true extent of mental health issues in the sector.
Three things stood out. Firstly, poor workplace practices and culture are as debilitating for emergency service personnel as exposure to trauma. Secondly, poor mental health literacy meant many people did not recognise they had a mental health condition; and thirdly, self-stigma gets in the way of people seeking support and is associated with poorer mental health outcomes. ESF drew on these findings to underpin a new focus on mental health. Key to this was a strategy to work in collaboration across the emergency management sector in Victoria to address shared issues.
The Foundation’s membership was expanded in 2018 from the key response agencies to a 15-member Stakeholder Council with a new skills-based board. The 15 members include all agencies in Victoria that have a key role in preparedness, response and recovery, and collectively they cover, at the last count, around 139,000 paid and volunteer front-line and support people working in emergency management – the vast majority being volunteers.
The Stakeholder Council, which includes the heads of agency or their representatives, comes together a few times a year to provide strategic oversight to ESFs work plan. As the organization has matured in its new form the Council has been asked to articulate how ESF can best add value to the good work they deliver.
Each member agency also has a representative on the ESF Learning Network, which brings together wellbeing managers monthly to learn from each other, national and international subject matter experts, and researchers. This means the wheel is no longer reinvented as Network members willingly share ideas and provide tremendous support for the agencies with less developed mental health strategies. They also identify where there are knowledge gaps, which leads ESF to gather evidence through studies or to seek out expertise to educate the managers.
In addition to this, ESF has a Mental Health Advisory Group (MHAG), which is a Committee of the Board. This group includes Professors, practitioners and psychologists with vast sector experience and exists to provide the CEO/Board with expertise and perspectives in relation to the development of ESF’s strategy and programme of work to improve mental health outcomes for Victorian emergency management personnel. As volunteer advisors the Group ensures that ESF’s programmes are underpinned by an extensive evidence base as well as providing advice regarding strategic opportunities.
With an unsustainable increase in costs associated with insurance premiums and mental health claims across the sector, ESF determined that it would focus upstream on the prevention and early intervention space, which has to date received far less attention than treatment of ill people but is crucial to improving mental health outcomes. ESFs purpose is therefore to reduce the detrimental impact emergency service work has on the mental health of the workforce through the development of leading practice prevention initiatives. Current areas of focus are leadership to create mentally healthy workplaces, families, early help seeking, transition to retirement, vicarious trauma and collaborative data collection.
In a mentally healthy workplace psychosocial risks are considered in every way business is done, everyone contributes to creating a culture where people feel safe and supported to talk about mental health, support is tailored for different needs and everyone can see that supporting worker mental health is a priority.
The Network determined in 2018 that a new way of developing team leaders that put the emphasis on nurturing mentally healthy workplaces was required and would have the greatest impact sector-wide. With the support of a WorkSafe WorkWell2 grant the Leading for Better Mental Health programme was developed and piloted. This is a unique action learning approach to building awareness of the leader’s role in psychological safety and then building capability and confidence to change behaviour. The programme was evaluated by Charles Sturt University and was found to be a strong enabler of positive culture change. In 2024 it will be offered to 150 team leaders sector-wide.
ESF developed its Mental Health Matters programme to address the issue of mental health literacy amongst volunteers. This highly successful programme, which addresses the fundamentals of recognizing signs and symptoms, where to draw support from and how to have effective conversations about wellbeing, has evolved over recent years to include the partners of volunteers. Alongside this, ESF has undertaken various studies to understand how families and children of emergency service workers want and need to be supported. This information has been translated into a comprehensive Family Matters strategy that aims to create a supportive and supported environment for the families of emergency service workers who are now well recognised as fundamental to supporting the wellbeing of emergency management workers and sustainability of the sector.
ESF undertook its own study to dive more deeply into this issue of stigma and build the evidence for its response. As a result, it has determined to develop a Lived Experience programme, which will develop a process for recruiting and training people to safely share their stories in the hope of encouraging others to recognise the benefit of addressing distress early when the hope of recovery is greatest. An adjunct to this work will be helping to effectively embed lived experience into all programme development.
According to WorkSafe Victoria, 25% of all mental health claims in Victoria now emanate from emergency service workers. With the financial, personal and organisational cost of these claims in mind, ESF is about to pilot an innovative Residential Wellbeing Programme, which aims to work with people in the orange zone of the mental health continuum who could be described as the ‘walking wobbly’ not clinically diagnosed with a mental health condition. Over four days of intense trauma-informed group work the aim is to intervene to help participants return to a state of thriving and prevent transgression to a serious mental injury. The programme is informed by work led by Dr Duncan Shields with police and firefighters in British Columbia Canada and is scheduled to begin as a pilot early in 2024.
Another innovative programme developed by ESF is Well Beyond. This is designed to improve the experience of people as they transition to retirement and was also initiated from the findings of Answering the Call. A framework was developed for agencies which outlines a strategic approach and leading practices to help provide a positive experience for people as they retire after many years of service. In addition to this, the Well Beyond coaching programme sees retired police and paramedics trained to coach others approaching retirement in four key areas ESF’s research indicated were a priority. This includes creating a new purpose, social connection, financial management and dealing with accumulated trauma. This unique programme has been found to benefit both coaches and coached individuals and has been welcomed by all participants.
ESF is a small organization with big ambition and has, over the past four years, made a tremendous impact across the sector in Victoria. In addition to the programmes outlined above ESF also brings the sector together through a range of events including the highly regarded Emergency Management Conference, International Women’s Day, a Mental Health Showcase and the AFL emergency services round. One member agency recently referred to us as ‘a trusted advisor, free from organisational biases and constraints’. In this role we will continue to keep our eye over the horizon, build the evidence and develop leading practice initiatives for agencies to integrate into their OHS strategies.
ESF is not responsible for the psychological safety of employees and volunteers. That responsibility sits with the various agencies who employee them. ESF, with its sole focus on prevention and early intervention, aims to support the agencies by applying an over-the-horizon view as it leads initiatives that translate research into innovative evidence-informed practice and programmes that effectively address the burning and debilitating issue of mental ill health affecting way too many people and, by association, their families.
ESF’s strategic and collaborative approach to addressing shared sector-wide mental health challenges makes the sector better together.
For more information go to www.esf.com.au
About the Author
Siusan MacKenzie
Siusan MacKenzie is CEO of ESF.
