In January a number of APS Disaster Response Network (DRN) psychologists became a part of the Australian Red Cross (ARC) volunteer workforce when they responded to our call for members to fulfil a newly created role at the ARC for a ‘field psychologist’. Field psychologists accompany ARC workers into the field following a disaster in order to provide support to the workers if needed. The ‘field’ in this instance was the area around Bourke St in Melbourne’s CBD following an incident on January 20 when a man on a violent spree deliberately drove his car into pedestrians. He killed six people, hospitalised 37, injured many more and left hundreds of people shocked, terrified and grieving.
The ARC and other emergency responders maintained a presence in the city around the scene of the tragedy for the following 10 days. People who worked or lived nearby, or those from further away who were directly or indirectly affected by the day’s events were able to return to Bourke St, spend time at the flower memorials, connect with others and talk about their experiences if they felt the need.
APS DRN psychologists were invited to be there primarily as back-up for the ARC workers providing psychological first aid (PFA). Our job was ‘caring for the carers’, but also to act as an escalation point when the ARC worker thought that a person needed a bit of extra support.
Many stories were shared, tears flowed, and over the week and a half, the mood shifted and soothed until a smoking ceremony was performed by Traditional Elders, the flower memorials were moved away and the city, on the surface at least, returned to business as usual.
While the APS has been sending DRN volunteers into the field with the ARC for the past six years, this is the first time we have been invited to have an early and ongoing role supporting their immediate response teams. The early involvement of psychologists with ARC PFA teams is a model that Rob Gordon FAPS and other psychologist disaster experts have long recommended. By all reports, it was a successful partnership. Our psychologists were greatly appreciated by the ARC workers in the field as well as back at headquarters. And it wasn’t just the ARC who were grateful to have psychologists on hand – other emergency service volunteers in the city also sought out our psychologists for support.
As is usual practice, a number of APS DRN psychologists helped out with telephone wellbeing checks for ARC workers following their deployment. We work through phone lists of returned ARC workers to check how their deployment went and how they are settling in back at home. We are often asked to help with wellbeing checks after difficult deployments, which this one was deemed to be given the heightened distress on Bourke St, widespread media coverage and the large number of people seeking support.
The APS and the ARC are enormously grateful for the wonderful support offered by our generous and compassionate volunteers. It’s a fast moving and somewhat mysterious process once we pass to the ARC our deployment-ready APS volunteers’ contact details. We always admire and are grateful for the way our members take it in their stride, offer what they can, and then thank us afterwards for the opportunity to help.
One ARC volunteer I spoke with said her workplace gives her four days of emergency service leave for each large-scale disaster, so that she can volunteer with the ARC providing psychological first aid to survivors in the aftermath. After helping at Bourke St, she was off to another local disaster following a plane crash that killed five people.
If you are a psychologist who is currently seeing, or likely to see people affected by the Bourke St tragedy, or an Employee Assistance Program provider for the Melbourne CBD, you might be interested in a briefing that was held by Department of Health and Human Services for mental health professionals. Contact [email protected] for a copy of the PowerPoint presentation.
Are you interested in becoming an APS DRN volunteer?