Curt Arey MA LAPC Louis Boynton ABD LPC NCC

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

2. 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

3. 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

4. What do you use ?

5. 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.

6. technology

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10.  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

11. 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)

12. Transformation of a system • Command and 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

13. Current projects • The Georgia Disaster Mental Health website • www.georgiadisaster.info • K-12 Emergency Preparedness Technical Assistance Center (K12EPTAC)

14. 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.)

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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse Don’t forget to check out the Practical Learning

19. Mobile technology • Getting information to people where they need it: • WHERE THEY ARE! • Phone Applications: linking websites and social media • Twitter • Facebook • YouTube 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

20. inspiration

21. Thank You for your interest! Curt Arey 404-931-2774 curtarey@comcast.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  Louis Boynton 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 • Assessment Counselor, Willowbrooke Hospital