Social work in Australia has a role to play as the impacts of climate change bring increasing natural disasters. Much of the political and media focus on climate change concerns ecological and economic effects, yet social work has the opportunity and ethical obligation to support communities to adapt. This contribution suggests a path forward, building on recent work at community and national levels. It argues that social work in Australia must reorient towards community-led climate adaptation by drawing on the National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA), the National Adaptation Plan, and the “Care through disaster” (CTD) framework (ACS 2025; DCCEEW 2025; Rooney et al., 2023; Spencer et al., 2024). We outline the national policy framework for climate risk in Australia, introduce the CTD framework, and analyse opportunities for social work under the three CTD pillars. Authors such as McAuliffe et al. (2023) note that social workers have many of the skills required in environmental and disaster work and have an important role to play.
The Australian Government released Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) and the National Adaptation Plan in 2025 to guide planning (ACS 2025; DCCEEW 2025). These reports result from climate science and extensive consultations, including with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They build a national framework that outlines future risks and the responses and adaptations required through to 2090. The framework is structured around eight systems: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; communities (urban, regional and remote); defence and national security; economy, trade and finance; health and social support; infrastructure and the built environment; natural environment; and primary industries and food (ACS 2025).
A community-level response for climate disaster has been developed by Australia reMADE with Women’s Health Goulburn North East (WHGNE) (Rooney et al., 2023; Spencer et al., 2024). The “Care through disaster” (CTD) framework guides local communities in preparing for climate disasters and engaging authorities as partners. It proposes three pillars for how communities are cared for in disaster: Seen (enabling community connection and cohesion), Safe (preventing where possible and providing refuge where not), and Supported (enabling communities to do what they do best) (Rooney et al., 2023). The following sections combine these two frameworks to indicate local, regional, and national opportunities for social workers over coming decades, using the three pillars as the structural basis.
SEEN: Valuing local expertise and identity
The Seen pillar highlights work at the community level so people know and understand each other and so governments and organisations listen to and know the community (Rooney et al., 2023). The National Adaptation Plan identifies Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and local and regional communities as at significant risk in the near and longer term (DCCEEW, 2025). Applying the Seen pillar suggests that these groups must not be treated only as groups experiencing heightened risk but as primary keepers of expertise.
First Nations sovereignty is central. The NCRA highlights risks to self-determination and to cultural knowledges, practices, values, and sites, threatening the wellbeing and identity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (ACS, 2025). The CTD framework argues that for First Nations people to be “Seen,” their connection to Country must be respected as essential disaster infrastructure. Adaptation must move beyond “consultation” to community-led, place-based solutions that recognise traditional ecological knowledge as a tool for national survival (Rooney et al., 2023). Social work, with its emphasis on rights and self-determination, can support this shift.
Local legitimacy also matters. The NCRA warns of cascading risks where infrastructure failure, such as energy grids, isolates regions (ACS, 2025). The CTD framework suggests governments must notice when communities are ready to lead, instead of imposing top-down, city-centric solutions that alienate rural and regional populations (Spencer et al., 2024). Social workers can work alongside communities to strengthen local leadership and support disaster preparedness, contributing to more legitimate, community-owned responses.
Finally, the infrastructure of connection is crucial. Being “Seen” requires investment in the “glue” of society—libraries, Men’s Sheds, Neighbourhood Houses, and similar spaces. These institutions can be repurposed during crises to ensure marginalised groups are not “unseen” and left behind (Rooney et al., 2023). Social workers, often present in such spaces, can support relationship-building and local organising that underpin resilience.
SAFE: Beyond physical shelter to psychological safety
The Safe pillar relies on people, governments, and organisations preparing locally for disaster: knowing where people go at a time of crisis, ensuring they are welcomed, and establishing how information will flow (Rooney et al., 2023). The NCRA describes a future with periods of extreme heat and potential failures of critical infrastructure such as water, transport, and energy systems (ACS, 2025). The Australian Human Rights Commission (2025) argues that governments and organisations must act on climate change if people are to be protected from the worst outcomes. The Safe pillar expands safety from physical survival to psychological and cultural safety (Rooney et al., 2023), which aligns with social work’s focus on holistic wellbeing.
Prevention in the CTD framework insists that prevention is better than cure (ACS 2025; Rooney et al., 2023). This requires state and federal governments to address root causes, including rapid decarbonisation and ending new fossil fuel approvals, to limit “unnatural disasters” (Spencer et al., 2024). Long-term community work before, during, and after disaster is vital, and social workers can advocate for sustained funding and play a role in implementing preventative, community-driven strategies.
Inclusive refuges are another aspect of safety. The NCRA identifies a projected rise in heat-related mortality (ACS 2025). The CTD framework notes that many evacuation centres are ill-suited to groups experiencing heightened risk, such as the elderly, mothers with infants, or LGBTQIA+ community members. Making communities safe means investing in multi-purpose, familiar infrastructure—like the gym refurbished with accessible spaces in Indigo Shire—where people already feel they belong (Spencer et al., 2024). Social workers can support community planning that prioritises inclusive, trauma-informed refuges and ensures that preparedness activities themselves strengthen community connection.
The framework also warns against maladaptation that exacerbates inequality. In this context, maladaptation is poorly considered action on climate risks that undermines communities (ACS, 2025). The CTD framework suggests a “care/risk” assessment that weighs financial or legal risk against the “care risk” of disempowering a community (Rooney et al., 2023; Spencer et al., 2024). Relationship-based engagement at the community level, supported by all tiers of government before and after disaster, is crucial to good outcomes. Social workers in high-risk communities can help ensure adaptation strategies reflect community needs and avoid deepening existing inequities.
SUPPORTED: Addressing economic and mental health impacts
The Supported pillar highlights how governments and organisations need to be engaged at a local level before, during, and after disasters and how community members need clarity on how that support will work (Rooney et al., 2023). The NCRA points to two burgeoning crises alongside environmental damage: a growing mental health burden and an economic crisis of uninsurability (ACS, 2025; Climate Council, 2025). The Supported pillar offers structural responses to these “long tails” of disaster (Spencer et al., 2024), and social workers are well placed to participate in designing and advocating for them.
The insurance protection gap is a major concern. The NCRA projects rapidly increasing disaster costs, with one in ten homes becoming “high risk” and potentially uninsurable by 2100 (ACS, 2025). Some costs fall to governments when infrastructure is damaged, but many—such as homes and vehicles—are borne by families (DCCEEW, 2025). The CTD framework argues that privatising this risk entrenches inequality, as only wealthier households can afford rising premiums. It recommends a shift to a universal, public disaster insurance model, potentially funded by fossil fuel taxes, so all citizens are financially protected from systemic climate shocks (Spencer et al., 2024). Social workers cannot leave these debates solely to economists and politicians if they are committed to supporting communities.
Mental health must be treated as essential labour rather than an afterthought. The NCRA notes that disaster trauma often persists for years (ACS, 2025). The CTD framework stresses that mental health support must not be “parachuted in and out” but embedded over time. It supports pathways that allow people not only to receive care but also to give care, recognising that arts, music, and creative play can be vital tools for collective healing and restoring hope (Spencer et al., 2024). Community-based social workers can be leaders in this non-clinical mental health work, drawing on local relationships and knowledge to design culturally relevant responses.
Finally, people need time to prepare and recover. To be Supported, communities require structural conditions that reduce “time poverty.” The CTD framework proposes shifts such as a four-day working week or a Universal Basic Income to free up time for building the social connections that save lives in crises (Spencer et al., 2024). Social workers can assist local and regional communities to discern what forms of support best fit their context, recognising that resources vary greatly across Australia and that no single approach will work everywhere.
Ensuring First Nations knowledge systems are embedded across these domains
With the above reflections and recommendations in mind, it is important to address the role social workers can play in ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and perspectives are valued and centred in these responses.
At the community level and in alignment with the Seen pillar (Rooney et al., 2023), social workers have an important role to play in advocating for the centring of Indigenous knowledge systems in caring for Country, preparation and response to natural disasters. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have practised resilience and adaptation to changing natural environments for millennia, and there are many examples of place-based, First Nations-led responses to the impacts of the climate crisis and natural disasters across Australia (see Morgan-Bulled et al., 2021). Social workers can advocate to ensure that these knowledges are centred with adherence to Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles of self-determination in disaster preparedness and response planning (see National Indigenous Australians Agency, 2024). This could occur in government and non-government agencies and organisations at the local level or in policy responses at the meso and macro levels.
In moving beyond physical shelter to psychological safety under the Safe pillar (see Rooney et al., 2023), social workers can also advocate to ensure that the appropriate resources and supports are made available and accessible to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. For First Nations peoples, connection to Country is an important aspect of maintaining social and emotional wellbeing (see Martin, 2009, p. 207; Dudgeon, Milroy & Walker, 2010). As such, it is important to recognise the extensive impact which natural disasters and degradation of the natural environment can have on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
These practices would also address the economic and mental health impacts of environmental disasters alongside the Supported pillar (see Rooney et al., 2023). For example, social workers can assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members by addressing immediate needs such as housing and financial support, as well as providing culturally responsive approaches centring on supporting social and emotional wellbeing (see Dudgeon, Milroy & Walker, 2010). Social work professionals must also establish and maintain connections with local Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) and Aboriginal-led programs which provide practical support at the forefront of disaster responses.
To work effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities experiencing mental health issues, social workers have a responsibility to ensure that appropriate protocols and practices are adhered to. In remote Aboriginal communities, western-centric models of psychiatric assessment and intervention are not sufficient to meet the mental health needs of Aboriginal people (Dudgeon, Milroy & Walker, 2010, pp. 260-261). As such, supporting communities to adapt to the effects of climate change and natural disasters requires intensive relationship-building and place-based responses to ensure climate resilience and adaptations are community-led and appropriate to the needs of the people who are impacted by these events.
Conclusion
This paper uses recent Australian reports to show the scale of the climate crisis and to outline thinking on how communities can adapt over coming decades (ACS 2025; DCCEEW 2025; Climate Council, 2025; Rooney et al., 2023; Spencer et al., 2024). The scale of the crisis cannot be left to governments alone; communities across the country are already considering how they can prepare for and recover from climate disasters. Social workers have many opportunities to adapt their work and roles to be more active in community-led climate change work. The suggestions here are a small contribution to how social work might adjust its focus in coming years. The CTD pillars of Seen, Safe, and Supported align with core social work approaches and offer a useful way of conceptualising local climate adaptation work and can direct work over time as cycles of climate disaster occur. Social work’s long history of community practice, combined with clinical mental health and trauma-informed practice where needed, will be crucial in strengthening responses to the escalating impacts of climate change.
References
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