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Day One at the National Conference on Societal Resilience 2026

This summary is meant to help those who could not attend the event feel as though they  were in attendance, so they can benefit from the rich offerings provided by  this event and its participants. 


The focus of this conference this year is centred on the theme of: Youth, Networks, and the Everyday Practice of Societal Resilience. The event was organised by the National Consortium for Societal resilience (NCSR).


Day 1 of the 4th National Conference on Societal Resilience highlighted the growing confidence of the societal resilience movement and the shift towards aligned investment, clearer strategic conversations, and co-created, people-centred approaches. 


Across the sessions, three threads remained constant: everyday resilience is relational, community capability is vast but under-connected, and vulnerability is dynamic, shaped by context and compounding pressures.


Below is a consolidated summary of the three sessions from day one and their implications for resilience practitioners, policymakers, and partners.


Session 1 – Working With Young People: Capability, Curiosity and Co-Creation


Insights from the session


Dr Martin Parham (HCRI) set out a clear framework for meaningful youth engagement: it must be supportive, inclusive, participatory, experiential, fun, and centred on lived experience. These principles allow young people to develop the confidence, agency, adaptability, and relational networks that underpin resilience.

Sharing insights from his experience and research he has found that young people thrive when they have:


  • Warmth and stability in their environment

  • Low-risk opportunities for challenge

  • Emotional intelligence and reflective practice

  • Real influence in decisions that affect them


Powerful examples illustrated this in practice:


  • In Dominica, co-created hazard maps enabled young people to describe risks in their own terms and establish intergenerational trust.

  • Disaster simulation conferences that built decision-making, teamwork, and career awareness through immersive learning.


Youth voices: what they need from us


The youth panel (Ages 16–21) grounded the discussion in practical reality. They described resilience as:


  • Adaptability and perseverance

  • Networks of family, peers, teachers and clubs

  • Something learned through experience, not slogans


Their expectations were clear:


  • “Talk with us, not at us.”

  • Use trusted, relatable messengers.

  • Prioritise hands-on learning, creativity, drama, and workshops over lectures.

  • Create safe-to-fail environments.

  • Make SEN-inclusive and universally designed engagement standard practice.

  • Start with curiosity, then build knowledge.


Key messages for practitioners


  • Co-creation must replace consultation.

  • Design for exposure, challenge and agency within safe boundaries.

  • Prioritise networked relationships around young people.

  • Embed universal design to ensure meaningful participation for all.


This session set a strong foundation for the conference because it demonstrated what effective co-creation looks like in practice. The case studies showed how youth engagement becomes more impactful when relationships are built over time and when young people help shape the work rather than simply receive it. The presenter’s approach played a key role: clear framing, accessible examples, and genuinely inclusive facilitation ensured that every stakeholder, especially the youth panel, had space to contribute meaningfully.


By combining longitudinal insight, participatory design, and skilled facilitation, the session modelled a form of engagement that many projects still strive for but rarely achieve. It highlighted that when young people are treated as partners, not beneficiaries, the quality, relevance, and legitimacy of resilience work increases significantly.


Session 2 – Community Emergency Response in Practice: Training, Trust and Real Responsibility


Constructive insights from the session


This session by Melvin Hartley (Churchill Fellow) brought an operational lens to the day, showing how well-trained volunteers—including teenagers—can become significant contributors during emergencies.

Examples included:


  • A US city that used CERT-trained young people to support its community through a 10-day water outage.

  • Hampshire’s HYPER (Young People’s Emergency Response Team) empowering 16–18-year-olds to undertake: 

    • sandbagging

    • missing-person searches

    • door-knocking and welfare checks

    • leadership, communications and debriefing


This model works because it combines structured training, proportionate supervision, and trust. When young people are given meaningful responsibility with the right support, capability and confidence grow simultaneously.

Melvin captured the system’s ethos succinctly:


“Society is made better when people help others in their community… volunteers are a welcome, valuable and vital part of response and recovery.”

Key messages for practitioners to take away is that; 


  • A trained volunteer is a capable asset.

  • Responsibility matched to skill builds confidence and community strength.

  • Localism, trust, and practical capability are as important as formal structures.


Session 3 – Dynamic Vulnerability and the Networked Civil Society Model


Understanding dynamic vulnerability


Villő Lelkes from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) highlighted that vulnerability is not a static demographic label. It shifts with context, time, and cascading pressures. A breastfeeding mother may be more vulnerable during a water outage than a healthy older adult.

A UK-wide survey highlighted systemic gaps, including:


  • Fragmented, outdated vulnerability data

  • Inconsistent engagement between water companies, LRFs and VCS partners

  • Challenges coordinating around chronic and compounding risks


Addressing these requires:


  • Vulnerable persons cells as part of local resilience arrangements

  • Improved data sharing and representation

  • Stronger LRF–utility–VCS coordination


Insights From the Group Discussion


The facilitated group discussion on the impacts of a power outage added real depth to the session, revealing important gaps in our collective understanding of dynamic vulnerability and the capabilities communities draw on during disruption. What became clear is that many practitioners still lack confidence in how to interpret or apply insights from disaster science, particularly when it comes to the systems, behaviours, and compounding pressures that shape vulnerability in real time.


The conversation also highlighted a broader challenge: limited awareness of the value and function of scientific advisory structures such as a local STAC (scientific & technical advisory cell) and the national SAGE (scientific advisory group for emergencies), and how their expertise can meaningfully inform decisions during emergencies. This is a missed opportunity. Disaster science has a crucial role in translating risk, uncertainty, and cascading impact into practical action — but only if the system understands how to access and use it.


Bridging this gap between scientific advice, operational practice, and community-level experience is essential. Strengthening this connection will allow emergency response to become more informed, adaptive, and reflective of the lived realities of the people most affected.


Unlocking civil society as a capability


Kelly Smith & Professor Duncan Shaw illustrated how the UK’s civil society ecosystem is vast. With around 185,000 registered organisations and an estimated 100,000 informal or unregistered groups. Yet despite its scale, much of this capability remains under-connected. This everyday network of people and organisations forms a critical layer of social infrastructure: those embedded in communities, providing daily support, holding specialist local knowledge, and acting as the true “zero responders” long before emergency services arrive.


They are also the ones who stay long after the blue lights depart, supporting communities through recovery that can last years or even decades. Despite this essential role, their contribution often remains invisible within formal resilience structures, highlighting a significant but addressable gap in how we connect, mobilise, and value civil society capability.


Kelly Smith and Professor Shaw reframed the challenge: 


Don’t build new structures. Connect and mobilise what already exists.


The ‘Ready2Help’ model enables this through:


  • A network-of-networks approach

  • Light-touch call-outs

  • Needs matrices to match capability to requirement

  • Activation through trusted local providers

  • A design philosophy centred on trust, simplicity, agility and relevance


Key messages for practitioners


  • Treat vulnerability as dynamic; design systems that can adapt.

  • Build mechanisms rather than meetings to connect capability quickly.

  • Centre the person with a need, surround them with trusted local support.

  • See civil society not as supplementary but as central infrastructure.



Final Reflections – Youth as Present-Day Partners in Societal Resilience

Day 1 reinforced a vital truth: young people are not future responders—they are partners today. Resilience is strongest when systems invest in relationships, curiosity, capability, and networks, not just structures and plans.

Three constructive takeaways stood out:


1. Build the mesh, not just the nodes

Resilience lives in relationships: youth organisations, community groups, volunteer networks, local leaders. These connectors hold trust and local knowledge.


2. Use Ready2Help thinking to activate what already exists

Map local capability. Create simple activation pathways. Mobilise civil society through trusted, light-touch, networked mechanisms, not new bureaucratic layers.


3. Modernise vulnerability practice

Adopt dynamic models of vulnerability. Strengthen integration across LRFs, utilities, VCS partners and scientific advisory structures. Prepare for chronic and cascading risks, not single-scenario models.


Thank you to all contributors—Dr Martin Parham, Melvin Hartley, Villo Lelkes, Kelly Smith, Professor Duncan Shaw—and to the young people whose honesty and insight grounded the day.


Day 1 underscored that societal resilience is not built through isolated initiatives but through the everyday actions, relationships, and collaborations that bind communities together. It is a living practice—strengthened each time people connect, participate, and support one another. For further context on how this takes shape across the country, and the influence of the NCSR+ on how resilience partnerships and partners think about and implement the building of a resilient society across the UK+, can be explored via the impact cases google map. 


Thank you to everyone who helped make Day One of the 4th National Conference on Societal Resilience (2026) such a success. The event was organised by the National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+], hosted by The University of Manchester, and delivered in association with the RBOC Network+, Noggin, and the VCS Emergencies Partnership. Your contributions, insights, and commitment to strengthening everyday societal resilience continue to drive this movement forward.


Past National Briefings on Societal Resilience

For those wishing to explore how the UK+ societal resilience agenda has evolved, past conference outputs are available here:


ICPEM Blogs & Previous Conference Summaries


My own summaries and reflective blogs from earlier NCSR conferences can also be found via the Institute of Civil Protection & Emergency Management (ICPEM):


 
 
 

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