Help Drafting Assignment
HM540
Unit5 DQ’s
TOPIC #1 Crisis Intervention Strategies for Leaders
As you contemplate the strategic use of crisis intervention strategies, what lessons have you learned that would help you if you were the local emergency manager for your community? What about if you were a federal coordinating official (FCO) in charge of a major response effort?
Respond Kindly to Student #1
Ryan Davidson
Crisis Intervention Strategies for Leaders
As a local emergency manager, understanding previous disaster response failures and successes is necessary, as the lesson learned from previous events can give insights to the needs of the community or areas that can be improved. Preventative care in the preparation of phase of a disaster should be one of the primary focus points to ensure that resources can support a major disaster; furthermore, ensuring that first responders have access to these strategies and resources should be one of the priorities of an emergency manager. Pending the size of the disaster, preventing burnout in first responders should also be a priority. Burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and psychological exhaustion and typically occurs in stages (James & Gilliland, 2017). Keeping first responders and crisis workers effectively engaged in the response effort is vital to the overall success of the response effort.
A federal coordinating official is a person, appointed by the president at the declaration of emergency, to assist in the coordination of federal resources in support of the response effort, and assess the disaster response needs, establishes field office and recovery centers, and the delivery of disaster relief resources (National Wildfire Coordinating Group, n.d.; FEMA, n.d.). The coordinating official comes in when an emergency is called by the president, and when necessary the official will begin to allocate resources to the response effort and set up additional centers to assist in the management of resources and recovery centers. As coordinating official, it is important to respond to needs and requests of the incident commands and support their efforts to preparation, response, and recovery activities.
References:
FEMA. (n.d.). Unit 1 disaster management roles and responsibilities. https://training.fema.gov/emiweb/downloads/is208sdmunit1.pdf
James, R. K., & Gilliland, B. E. (2017). Crisis intervention strategies (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.
National Wildfire Coordinating Group. (n.d.). Federal coordinating officer (FCO). https://www.nwcg.gov/term/glossary/federal-coordinating-officer-fco
Respond Kindly to Student #2
Travis Reed
Hello Y’all
I have learned that as an emergency manager, one needs to build resources that support crisis intervention strategies. To pool necessary crisis intervention, I have learned that it is essential to create a crisis management plan that defines the nature and quantity of resources that facilitate any crisis intervention measures (Public Health Emergency, n.d.). Additionally, I have learned the importance of customizing crisis intervention strategies to match with the disaster recovery psychological phases. Also, I have learned the importance of establishing an effective communication culture that ensures efficiency in crisis intervention. On the other hand, as a federal coordinating official, I have learned that it is crucial to declare a vulnerable crisis area, thus enhancing people to have psychological preparedness to the crisis. I have also learned that as a leader, I need to consider transparency, proportionality, fairness, and professionalism while executing any crisis intervention duty (Ansell & Boin, 2019). Additionally, I have learned on how to plan for resources, including appropriate allocation of federal resources to major crisis regions.
References
Ansell, C., & Boin, A. (2019). Taming deep uncertainty: The potential of pragmatist principles for understanding and improving strategic crisis management. Administration & Society, 51(7), 1079-1112.
Public Health Emergency. (n.d.). https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/planning/abc/Pages/community-resilience.aspx
No part of this posting is intended to offend anyone in this class. If my posting does offend anyone, I sincerely apologize.
v/r
Reed
TOPIC #2 Current Events
Please research some current events related to traumatic events and human service workers and post at least two of these events to the Discussion Board. Within your posting, describe how your chosen items tie to this week’s overview and outcomes. You may use the University Library or any other outside resource for your research. Be sure to use proper citation. Please remember to review your fellow students’ postings and respond to at least three events, posting throughout the week.
Kindly Respond to Student #1
Kevin Fennell
In the current climate of today the most traumatic thing still occurring is the pandemic of Covid-19. This virus has changed the way that so many have lived. People feel very uneasy and unsafe is the new world we are living in today (Lamar et al., 2021). Parents were trapped in their homes without work for nearly a year. There have been major changes to everyday life and messing with routine can cause severe mental anguish. Not to mention living in constant fear that a new virus that no one knew anything about could kill you can definitely induce stress. This has led millions to seek counselling and help for their mental needs. The crisis workers such as hospitals and therapists have had a large increase in patients seeking mental health help. Now we are approaching year 2 of the pandemic and people are presenting the same issues which are very taxing on the crisis workers.
In another recent event there was another shooting in a high school in Michigan. There were kids that witnessed 4 of their classmates murder in the middle fo the day when one of their own walked into school and opened fire. This would take a toll on anyone let alone kids who were having their average day and then their lives were turned upside down. This can turn into hatred for school buildings or large populated groups. Can also lead to several trust issues with institutions that are meant to protect and teach students (Camera, 2021). The first responders at these scenes are in a chaotic and traumatic event much like the students and staff and will potentially require mental health assistance later on in life. It is never easy to see someone murder but it always much ahrder when children are involved.
Lamar, M. R., Speciale, M., Forbes, L. K., & Donovan, C. (2021). The Mental Health of U.S. Parents During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 43(4), 319–335. https://doi-org.libauth.purdueglobal.edu/10.17744/mehc.43.4.03
Camera, L. (2021). Gun Safety Advocates, Educators Call on Congress — Again — to Take Up Gun Legislation. U.S. News & World Report - The Report, C9–C11.
Kindly Respond to Student #2
Rama Mustafa
The Pandemic
Aside from the disaster, the Covid-19 pandemic can be included as one of the traumatic events that happen nowadays because more innocent people are affected by these viruses, and most of their loved ones died because of this virus. It causes a traumatic event in their life. There were many human service workers when the pandemic hit; they did not know how to respond, or some were in denial about the effect such an event has had. To respond, the person will need support and time to recover from the traumatic event and regain emotional and mental stability. Shock and denial shortly after the event are normal reactions, and shock and denial are often used to protect yourself from the event's emotional impact. You may feel numb or detached, and you may not feel the event's full intensity right away. Additionally, the pandemic affected human service workers because they will never know whether they will still work in their company, or their company will be closed and bankrupt. This may cause a traumatic to them, affecting their mental health thinking of this kind of event.
Healthcare staff will likely be exposed to many potentially traumatic events and events leading to significant distress and moral suffering. As frontline workers, they are highly exposed to the virus itself. The risk of getting sick and needing to be quarantined or hospitalized, or even dying are ever-present. Many healthcare workers have already lost numerous patients and even colleagues to COVID-19. The dramatic increase in cases has overwhelmed healthcare systems (Sanchez-Gomez et al., 2021).
As a result, staff may be forced to make impossible triage decisions about how to allocate limited resources to the patients they are caring for. All of these potentially traumatic experiences are occurring in the context of under extreme pressures, including fear of spreading the virus to loved ones, possible separation from family, mental and physical exhaustion, and limited access to personal protective equipment and needed medical supplies.
The California Wildfires
Given the worsening wildfire seasons in California, we must increase our understanding of both the scope of the health and social issues that survivors navigate following a disaster and the effectiveness and sustainability of recovery resources available to survivors. We must also understand the "ripple effect" those wildfires have on surrounding communalities, impacting housing access, social services, and health care access. More research and support, especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic, is urgently needed to improve our ability to support wildfire survivors' health and social needs in the future. The early psychological preparation helps reduce the impact of the occurrence of trauma in the future (Rosenthal et al., 2021).
References
Rosenthal A, Stover E, Haar RJ (2021) Health and social impacts of California wildfires and the deficiencies in current recovery resources: An exploratory qualitative study of systems-level issues. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0248617. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248617
Sanchez-Gomez, M., Giorgi, G., Finstad, G. L., Urbini, F., Foti, G., Mucci, N., ... & León-Perez, J. M. (2021). COVID-19 Pandemic as a Traumatic Event and Its Associations with Fear and Mental Health: A Cognitive-Activation Approach. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(14), 7422.