Crisis Intervention and Management Australasia (CIMA) has awarded Ian Mannix, ABC Radio Manager of Emergency Broadcasting and Community Development, for his Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Crisis Intervention.

This award was presented to Ian by Alexina Baldini, President of CIMA, at the CIMA conference awards function.

The award “recognised Ian’s strategic development and coordination of the ABC’s emergency broadcasting and for his efforts with the ABC Local Radio’s recovery broadcasting, which aims to help recovering communities following crisis with communication and information based on the work of Dr Rob Gordon”.

Ian’s paper at the biennial CIMA conference in 2011 ‘Responding the Crisis and Disaster: Building the future by learning from the past’ focused on his work during and after the 2009 Victorian Bushfires and was appreciated by many crisis response workers. Ian also presented at CIMA’s most recent conference ‘The Dynamics of Resilience: Building synergies between responders, recovery agencies and communities’, taking part in a panel discussion, entitled The Media as a Source of Resilience in the Aftermath of Emergencies. Over 50 different organisations were represented at the conference from Australia and New Zealand including personnel from fire, ambulance, hospitals, Governent community health and the military.

CIMA is a not-for profit foundation dedicated to the prevention, mitigation and effective management of critical incident stress and trauma for personnel in emergency services, police, corrections, health, welfare and related community services. CIMA provides training and support for workers in these agencies in managing the impact of psychological stress and trauma in their work. In addition it supplies advocacy and consultancy services to small enterprises seeking help with local workplace incidents by providing a conduit between these groups and qualified personnel.

CIMA congratulated Mannix and the ABC for their innovative work in this area.