Fortem Australia to Support More First Responders

Fortem Australia has announced that it will soon expand its services and provide support to more first responders across the nation.

At a launch on the 1st of September 2022, Fortem Managing Director and Co-Founder John Bale confirmed the ‘National Health and Wellbeing program’ will be rolled out across Australia and reiterated the importance of supporting first responders and their families throughout the country.

“Expanding Fortem’s reach beyond Australia’s eastern states and delivering more free evidence-based mental fitness and wellbeing support to first responders and their families is vital,” said Mr Bale.

This expansion will increase Fortem’s presence and footprint across the country and more than double the size of the national team to 80.

Fortem currently offers on-the-ground services in towns and cities along the east coast of Australia, including Melbourne, Gippsland, South East NSW, Canberra, Illawarra, Shoalhaven, Sydney, Newcastle, NSW Mid North Coast, Northern NSW, South East Queensland, and Brisbane.

As part of the expansion team members will be recruited in Darwin, Perth, Townsville, the Sunshine Coast, Newcastle, Launceston, Adelaide, Nowra, Ballina, Dubbo and Albury with the majority starting over the coming weeks and months.

“We were established after the devastating Black Summer bushfires in 2019/20, which left physical and mental scars on communities across the country’s south-eastern regions, Mr Bale said.

“As we have seen three years on, these kinds of intense natural disasters linked to climate change will continue, and with them the traumatic events that our brave first responders must deal with in the line of duty.

“Events like the floods seen in Northern New South Wales in recent months show the impacts these natural disasters have in the short term, but also in the aftermath of continuous events. This has been highlighted in recent research on PTSD, long-term effects, and spillover stress to the families of first responders.”

Over the last three years, Fortem has had over 18,000 wellbeing activity registrations, provided more than 2,850 counselling sessions, and created a large library of resource materials for first responders and their families that have been downloaded more than 4,000 times.

• Topics:

• First Responders
• Health & Wellbeing
• Emergency Services