Foreword

Introduction
Organisations providing aged care services have a duty to ensure that they have adequate plans in place to deal with emergencies or business interruptions. Wherever possible, these plans must be consistent with industry best practice.

This manual gives aged care providers a framework and tools to assist with developing their plan. It is assumed that you already have documented local/site fire and emergency (including evacuation) response procedures in place, as required by the Occupational Health and Safety Act 1984, Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (1996) and associated codes of practice and guidance notes. Those sites that have not undertaken this task should do so prior to implementing this framework.

Aim
The aim of this manual is to provide:

• strategies and tools for local integration and co-ordination of emergency management across the aged care organisation.
• a framework to guide organisations and managers to develop continuity plans in the event of a disaster or emergency

Construction
The manual begins by outlining national and Western Australian State Emergency Management arrangements in order to place it in context.

A framework is then provided to assist organisations develop continuity plans that will meet their specific circumstances. This section provides suggested actions to complete the various components of a Business Continuity Plan and is supported by explanatory commentary and in some sections additional resources and links.

ACSWA would like to acknowledge and thank theses people for their support and input into this project. Acknowledgements

Example & Reference Documents
A range of documents have been provided on this CD as references or examples. These are either Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat PDF files. Links to these documents are in the "Resource" section at the bottom of the relevant pages in this manual. In each case, the file type and size is indicated next to the link [eg: (Word Document 3.6Mb)]. To open these files simply click the link. If your browser is not equipped to display Word or PDF files you may be prompted to open the file in another application (ie. Word or Acrobat Reader). Alternatively you can right click on the link and select "Save link as" so you can put the file on your desktop and double click it from there.