This project has been discontinued. This project's report was completed on 29 October 2021.

Project approach

This project was initiated to help local government environmental health officers (EHOs) understand their ever-increasing role in emergency management and response to public health disasters.

The grant funding will be returned to the scheme as COVID-19 has limited the capacity of Environmental Health Australia (EHA) to deliver this project.  However, this project did achieve a number of outcomes and EHA are planning to progress this project in the future.

COVID-19 has highlighted that there is a role for EHOs, however, the pathways to getting them involved are still not clear.  Training needs to be developed and delivered for this workforce to be better informed, more efficient and consistent in their approach. EHA applied for this grant before the COVID-19 health emergency and received an extension in recognition that COVID-19  has been very time consuming for SA Health, the LGFSG and EHA who are the key partners in this project.

It has been difficult to progress this work when all our resources are still tied up with the covid response. We have been able to lay the foundation of what is required for the training materials, having consulted with EHOs in a training needs analysis and more recently at an EHA conference and now have a better understanding of what needs to be developed.

Project achievements

To date, EHA has regularly consulted with a small reference group, held a training needs analysis session with representatives from both regional and metro councils, and run a workshop at the EHA Conference in September with 50 EHOs to determine what needs to be included in the training materials to be developed for this workforce.

All of this valuable consultation has culminated in the following to be developed.

Role and responsibility of an EHO externally within a multidisciplinary response to an emergency

• Clarification of roles and responsibilities
  • Incident controllers/leaders
  • Expectation of EHOs
• Base understanding of each agencies role
• Understanding of process including:
  • Guidance around tailored risk assessment dependent upon scenario (existing templates may be too clunky/cumbersome)
  • ‘how to guides/ cheat sheets (how to tackle certain emergencies) are short and sweet
• Practical scenarios -
  • Videos from other agencies from their perspective and include EHO stories

Role and responsibility of an EHO within my council with promoting the role of an EHO in emergency management/response, and how to manage up to drive the purpose of this role:

• EHOs to be engaged in planning
• Legal responsibilities to be explained up the line
• Those with experience to deliver the course content

Understanding the role of an EHO in an emergency response to:

• Flood
• Pandemic
• Bushfire
• Urban Fire
• Black system event

Preparing in my role as an EHO with regards to setting expectations prior to an emergency and how and what to do in the early stages of response:

• What information we need to give other people in council so they acknowledge is and the role of the EHO is clear
• Checklists
• Scenarios
• All info is valuable to us
• What would we need
• Risk assessment tool
• Want to hear from other EHOs who are already involved in the delivery of the course and people who do this on a regular basis

Where and how to find reliable and reputable information and education resources relating to my scope of responsibility as an EHO:

• Directory of experts and contacts within SA and other states
• Consistency in roles across councils

SA Emergency Management arrangements (i.e. when to step in, rights and responsibilities of the EHO team: -What are the arrangements?

• Role of EHO
• Who is the commander and how do we engage with them?
• What preventative roles do we do?

Understanding the additional legislation and associated requirements that come into plan during an emergency:

• Templates
• Who to report to
• Roles and responsibilities

Wellbeing.  Looking after my psychological safety in my role as an EHO, and those around me

The information gathered is still very relevant and important, and will be revisited in 2022.

Project outputs and outcomes

Having the information required to now develop the tools and training has been a much-needed process which this project has afforded us.

The next steps are to now dedicate resources to develop this training material.

We decided as a group that the training needs be identified before a Joint Operating Guideline be developed between the LGFSG, SA Health and EHA.

The COVID-19 response has hampered our ability to deliver on this project, however, it has also granted us many learnings that need to be documented and included in EHO training moving forward.