This chapter introduces readers to important concepts and practicalities in facilitating, managing, and delivering the wellbeing and psychosocial agendas. It describes the research undertaken by the Social Influences on Recovery Enquiry (SIRE) undertaken in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, and its importance in framing the practical implications for planning and delivering services.

The editors create an agenda of themes for developing services and practitioners, and for research capable of responding to psychosocial aspects of emergencies, incidents, disasters, and disease outbreaks (EIDD) and their deleterious effects. Topics include the perspectives of scientists, practitioners, and the public, the historical importance of how current capabilities have developed, the critical theme of agreeing definitions, recognising the wellbeing, psychosocial, and mental health agendas that face survivors of EIDD in their recovery, the fallacies of basing planning on panic and the belief that survivors of subsequent EIDD fare better than first timers, and the importance of good communication within and between agencies and then with the public, and of teams and their leadership. It recognises the lessons from the social sciences, and the importance of social support, psychological safety, and our relationships in our recovery. This book strongly supports the notion that there is no health without mental health.

This chapter considers the components and organisation of civil protection. The first part of the chapter includes key definitions of terms. The second part defines and examines civil protection. The third part provides a critical review of the basis of emergency planning, and the fourth part looks at various aspects of emergency preparedness. Emergency planning is based on reference events from the past and, in the fifth part of the chapter, the key question of whether the past really is still an adequate guide to the future is addressed. The final part of the chapter looks at the growing field of risk and disaster science.

This chapter is a case study that describes the experience of establishing a peer support programme in a critical care unit in an NHS hospital in the UK. The case study is set within a description of what peer support is and ideas about the underpinning principles for a peer support programme.

This chapter focuses on caring for people who have disabilities who are affected by emergencies and pandemics. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 1.3 billion people have some degree of disability. It highlights the wide spectrum of severity of disability that people display, and points out that how data are collected, combined with the lack of clear definition of the term disability, makes it hard to be precise about the numbers and proportions of people with serious intellectual or developmental disability compared with those with a range of physical disabilities, or with both. It concludes that the principle of equity demands that people who have disabilities need to have individual plans for their care. It proposes that emergency planning should take account of the needs of vulnerable people, including those people who have a disability, and that they have a role in planning for, preparing for, and responding to emergencies.