What is the Council’s Community Resilience team?

The emergency development of a dedicated Community Resilience team at WSMTC which could respond to the needs of the community as a result of the COVID pandemic was formed in March 2020.

The team consists of a core team of 5 staff members, and it has now been made permanent via the Council’s HR committee.  This cross-departmental team was deliberately chosen and developed with a flexible approach to be able to expand and contract as required, whilst utilising relevant staff skills as required.

The original response team was formed and up and running within the first 10 days of the pandemic starting, and resulted in the coordination and mobilisation of 3 core community groups and NSC together as partners for this crisis delivery to a community of 80,000 people.

The strengths of this team include:

  • Applying the principles of ABCD to work with the community and utilise skills and resources that the community itself holds.
  • Administration and communication skills
  • Volunteer support and coordination
  • Team leadership skills and co-ordination of COVID response
  • Marketing, IT and communications skills
  • Development and grant fund writing
  • Community liaison and partnership building

What is the why?

We have recognised by diversifying and adapting there is potential to deliver community initiatives that benefit the town with the council playing a key role as facilitator and enabler. In addition, our current service delivery can be reviewed by using effective, efficient and collaborative ways of working with service partners and through cross departmental working. This aspiration will be included in future business reviews and budget setting processes.

Following the adoption of the 6 Community Outcomes, linked to the council’s strategy the team now aims to use dedicated Community Resilience methods:

The outcomes are fully transferable to the delivery of other community initiatives such as:

  • Community Events (both internal and external programmes)
  • Community, Tourism Marketing & Promotion
  • Weston’s Place making Strategy objectives – as a partner to represent the community
  • Outsourcing community services that we already do – to support costs (dog bins as example)
  • Use of volunteers across departments – roll out the process used at the Museum to support service delivery and enhance social wellbeing.