COMMUNITY SUPPORT TRAINING FOR EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS APPLICATIONS SOCIAL

COMMUNITY SUPPORT & TRAINING FOR EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS: APPLICATIONS, SOCIAL MEDIA, & CHANGING TECHNOLOGY Curt Arey MA LAPC Louis Boynton ABD LPC NCC

GOALS OF THE PROJECTS • • Helping with community preparedness and education Helping to reduce stress Finding resources for people Training responders Providing safety and information Increasing effective communication Saving lives and reunites families

PHONES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & APPS • Twitter can send information, pictures, video, mail, and take polls • Tele-psychiatry: Skype • Google hangout, Google documents, and collaboration in training. • Writing groups can be global • Pollanywhere. com

WHAT DO YOU USE ?

COMMUNICATION TRAINING • Active listening: • pay attention, • evaluate, and • respond • Relational skills: • • respect & dignity, empathy, give hope to others, and reduce anxiety, • Communication skills: • • clear instructions, I statements, body cues (positioning & power), voice, tone, and accurately express emotions.

TECHNOLOGY

DISASTER MENTAL HEALTH • Goal is to empower people to do what they are able to do for themselves • Avoid pathologizing people • Remember people will recover • Prevention and mitigation saves lives • Build capacities • Build resiliency of the individual • Create systems working together

RESILIENCE • A process linking set adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a disturbance. • Communities want one thing: “the life they had before this event happened” • The theory starts with assumption that communities will unite and rebuild. • Ecological, physical, & psychological resilience

CHANGE IN THE SYSTEM: AMELIORATIVE OR TRANSFORMATIVE? • Almost always ameliorative • A matter of problem solving • Power dynamics are usually minimized • might show up in disaster prevention/mitigation • often no one thinks about oppression with disasters • Short term plans focused around event of disaster • some long term intervention around resiliency regardless of disaster but not on prevention • Disaster response may consider ways to reduce the chance of a school shooting (metal detectors) but likely won’t go further into the dynamics of why the disaster event is a possibility

TRANSFORM THE SYSTEM • Consider role of power: disasters are not inevitable • focus not just on preventing disasters but on the power and oppressive structures which create and/or worsen disasters • Even in natural disasters: Haiti • earthquake may not be preventable • power struggle made earthquake another level of a disaster • School shooting: consider school bullying and other issues that lead to inequalities and oppression within the school and environment

TRANSFORM THE SYSTEM • Focus on prevention • Consider underlying values • health, compassion, holism are most common for ameliorative • move to include self-determination, social justice, respect for diversity, and accountability to oppressed groups • Trust that people have resources (rather than being given them from outside)

TRANSFORMATION OF A SYSTEM • • • Command control to value centered governance Deep respect for every individual, regardless of position Wide disbursement of power High personal responsibility Self- discipline rather than imposed discipline

CURRENT PROJECTS • The Georgia Disaster Mental Health website • www. georgiadisaster. info • K-12 Emergency Preparedness Technical Assistance Center (K 12 EPTAC)

www. georgiadisaster. info • A ready resource for the citizens of Georgia • including updated information that emerges in the field. • New developments in the field of disaster mental health. • All-hazards approach • Participatory Action Research (P. A. R. )

GEORGIA DISASTER MENTAL HEALTH • Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities (GADBHDD) grant • delivered by Larry Schor, Ph. D, LPC, NCC, CPCS at the University of West Georgia • Although focusing on mental health, it is designed to be the goto website for information concerning all facets of disasters: prevention & mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery

• Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) grant to the Evaluation Center at the University of West Georgia • Effort to support school districts in: • developing comprehensive plans reflective of the all-hazards approach, • improving existing plans, • facilitating emergency management partnerships, and • designing plans for continuity of instruction in the event of prolonged school closure. • The target population for this project includes all school personnel who are charged with the safety and security of children enrolled in K-12 schools • Pilot project

K-12 EPTAC TABLETOP • Specific to the pilot schools • Scenario written to appeal to the school population • Unknown chemical spill with injects • Roles within groups (N~80) • After Action Report • Opportunity for participants to provide feedback and synthesize learning from the entire project • “The most helpful part to put the FEMA modules into perspective” • Creativity in bringing the knowledge to your target demographic

PREPAREDNESS 101: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE Don’t forget to check out the Practical Learning

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY • Getting information to people where they need it: • WHERE THEY ARE! • Phone Applications: linking websites and social media • • Twitter Facebook You. Tube channels Websites as smartphone applications/buttons • Four phases of Emergency Management • • Planning & Mitigation: Floodwatch; Weather Preparedness: FEMA; Ready GA Response: American Red Cross Recovery: VA’s PTSD app; SAMHSA

INSPIRATION

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST! Curt Arey Louis Boynton 404 -931 -2774 curtarey@comcast. net 678 -525 -9830 louisboynton@att. net • University of West Georgia • Project Coordinator, Georgia Disaster Mental Health Website • Project Designer & Trainer, K 12 Emergency Preparedness Technical Assistance Center • Resident Psychotherapist, Heartwork Counseling Center • University of West Georgia • Project Coordinator, Georgia Disaster Mental Health Website • Project Designer & Trainer, K 12 Emergency Preparedness Technical Assistance Center • Assessment Counselor, Willowbrooke Hospital