The CWSR was invited to the launch of the UK Resilience Academy (UKRA)

Ruth Crick and Caroline Field, co-founders of the CWSR, at the launch of the UKRA

On Monday 28th April, Caroline Field and Ruth Crick were two of a select group of guests invited to attend the launch of the UK Resilience Academy up in York. The event was opened by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, and attended by Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office, Abena Oppong-Asare, along with the UK Resilience Directorate Team and Guests from “Affiliate Organisations”.  

Pat McFadden talked about the need for a whole system approach and the importance of a shared understanding of resilience. He linked it to the Defence agenda and the importance of resilience on enabling a prosperous economy. He mentioned that the government was working on a risk and vulnerability tool to provide key information on vulnerable populations for ministers to help with decision making.  

The VIP guests were given the opportunity to meet with the Ministers. Caroline discussed the importance of measuring resilience with Abena Oppong-Asare and provided an overview of PA’s recent work with the Department of Business and Trade and HM Treasury in writing a supplementary guide to the Green Book entitled “Valuing Economic Resilience and Security”. This stems from Caroline’s 15-year experience of developing methods to measure resilience, alongside providing clients with the business case for investing in strategic resilience measures.  

Mary Jones, the UK Resilience Director, then kicked off the rest of the day with an overview of the Academy and its focus on delivering learning for whole of society, with a focus on three key areas: crisis and incident management, preparedness and organisational resilience.  

Caroline and Ruth were both invited to participate in one of three panels on the topic of “Sharing Information with the Public: Ensuring Trust and Transparency for Better Outcomes”. They talked alongside Dr Eleanor Parker (UKRA), Duncan Shaw (National Consortium for Societal Resilience) and Ailsa Mackay (National Centre for Resilience). As part of this panel, Caroline discussed the importance of communicating resilience and engaging individuals by tapping into their needs and concerns. She outlined her framework to clearly articulate the complexity of resilience – “Resilience for what, of what, to what, and so what”. Caroline also discussed the need for bottom-up, community-led engagement, alongside high-level government leadership. By involving community leaders and members as part of the solution, on-the-ground change and the development of programmes to resolve local challenges can be accelerated. Hence, engagement at a local level is required to harness local insight and knowledge. Caroline concluded her discussion by emphasising the actions needed; by joining the dots, employing a whole system view, providing leadership with the skills to empower everyone to play their part, and capturing and articulating what resilience can deliver locally, whole society resilience and national growth builds.  

The day closed with a speech from Hamish Cormack, the Head of the UKRA, where he reiterated the open door and open mind that the UKRA will take with a focus on collaboration with its Affiliates and the focus on sharing knowledge, tools and networks. The CWSR is an Affiliate and looks forward to supporting the UKRA.