Communications

Don't wait for an emergency to happen. Work out now how to communicate between your group members in an emergency. Planning before anything happens makes a big difference.

Set up trusted ways to share messages.

You may have, for example:

• Local newsletters
• WhatsApp groups for neighbours or community members
• A community Facebook page
• Noticeboards in community buildings
• Regular town hall meetings
• Local school communications

Try to have a mix of virtual and non-virtual channels, to reach more members of your community. Physical channels like noticeboards and meetings are particularly important for people who do not have a smartphone or access to the internet.

For social media channels, agree who is responsible for keeping them up to date and moderating them if necessary.

People may share false information either by mistake or on purpose. Even false information shared by mistake can cause harm.

Before an emergency, talk with your group and wider community about which sources you feel you can trust, and help people to understand how to check if information is true. For example, we should ask who shared it first, and check if an official source says the same thing.

Use many different ways to share messages about getting ready for an emergency and what to do in one. Then more people in your group can get the messages they need before, during and after an emergency. This might include:

• Online public meetings
• Noticeboards where your community group members spend time
• WhatsApp groups
• Pictures with short messages for social media
• Telephone helplines that offer translation into other languages. This is particularly important to help people in your community who do not speak English fluently

For advice on talking to children about emergencies, read the children’s communication advice in the Supporting People with Additional Needs module.

Involve different people when you plan your messages. This will help you test that your messages are working for different groups of people.

It’s particularly important to involve people who may need extra help in an emergency. They can help you understand:

• What help people might need
• Which messages would be useful
• Which formats make the advice easy to use, like large print or audio

Read more in the module on Supporting People with Additional Needs.

Messages work best when you plan them together with the people you want to reach. For example:

• People with low vision or sight loss can help select formats that are easy to read
• People with colour blindness can help select colours that are easy to read
• New parents will be able to share what advice would be most helpful for them
• People who speak other languages fluently will be able to help reach other people who do not speak English fluently. Online translation tools can often make mistakes.

Work with other groups in your community to find people that your community know and trust. They may be able to share emergency advice.

A trusted messenger is someone people know. They may share their culture, language, accent or local area. It could be a local faith leader, sports coach, local radio presenter, head teacher, pub landlord, local musician, or the administrator of a local Facebook group, for example.

Trusted messengers are especially important in communities that don’t trust official advice, and messages work best when trusted people from the community share them quickly.

Some people in your community may have skills and experience that can help your group to share messages. They might include people who:

• Have worked in communications or marketing
• Social media and graphic design experts
• Speak other languages
• Know British Sign Language
• Can help translate advice into Braille

These people can quickly turn advice that is hard to understand into simple steps that people can follow.

Add these skills to the group skills audit. This is a list of skills people in your group have.

For communication to work, those who are trying to share messages also need to listen.

Agree how the group will pass on people’s worries, what they notice locally, and their feedback. Pass it to someone who can respond, or who can change future messages.

Some ideas include:

• Sharing how to access helplines, or helping to set up a local helpline where appropriate
• Question and answer sessions at public meetings (in person or online)
• Responding to comments on social media posts
• Short feedback surveys.

People can share worries, ask questions, and share rumours. The group can then use this information to update the groups messages. You can do this before an emergency and during one.