This paper begins without the usual attempts to define resilience and shared responsibility but instead introduces the fundamentals of community resilience, reminding us of the story of brigade and emergency service formation in the 1800's of a time when Australia didn't need its Government to strategise for resilience, a time when people worked together with local leaders using existing knowledge and resources to prepare and deal with disasters.

Fast-forward to the modern day where government commitment to embedding principles for disaster resilience practice in emergency management legislation combined with a reduction in spending, signals an end to top-down service delivery. There is now a need for an improvement on previous approaches focused on informing communities to giving people far greater power to shape their own lives and environments.  The role of emergency services shifts from a paternalistic one of provider and carer to that of enabler; responding to and supporting local action.

So how do we as a sector support communities to self-determine when outside rural areas, individuals appear overly reliant on government support, volunteering is on the decline, social capital is low and the air of entitlement seems pervasive?  The answer lies in a return to our roots, working at the local level, forming partnerships and displaying trust in personal and community strengths.

A move towards localism and community empowerment requires emergency services to seek out different ways of working in support of, rather than for communities.  Community Led Planning (CLP) offers a way of achieving this, resulting in empowered communities that are more resilient and capable of meeting their own needs. This paper will draw down from a recent case study in Victoria where CLP was trialled across 16 communities it includes an exploration of how much of a role emergency services could or should play in building community capacity and how community expectations and demands on local emergency service providers can be managed whilst people identify their local needs and priorities and agree on a range of different actions which help to minimise risk.