Welcome!
This video is part six of a nine-part series and is intended for state, tribe, and territory
disaster behavioral health coordinators and others involved with disaster planning, response,
and recovery.
The four learning objectives in this video are to:
Identify the methods of assessing capacity for providing services.
Understand how to use the needs assessment data to inform the response strategy.
Understand that the mental health needs of an affected population will always vary by
the scope, size, and severity of the disaster.
And finally, understand the importance of coordinating care for responders.
A needs assessment involves collecting multiple levels of information regarding demographics
and socioeconomic and environmental factors related to a disaster.
Let's discuss some points to remember when implementing a formal needs assessment methodology.
Number one: Understanding your state is critical.
Know who acquires and keeps the information you need ahead of time.
Baseline indicators can assist you greatly in determining the type of disruption taking
place for individuals and communities.
Number two: A needs assessment is an ongoing process before and throughout incident recovery.
You will need to continually redefine the stakeholder groups most relevant to each phase
of disaster response.
You will find that the volunteer groups and response agencies will vary in each phase
of a disaster.
Therefore, your stakeholders will vary and your data points and your needs assessment
will change over time.
What is important now might not be as important later.
Number three: The pre-incident planning information will inform the actual disaster behavioral
health incident program design.
It is your actual program design that leads to both short-term and long-term interventions.
The needs assessment data should not only support the recovery trajectory of individuals
and communities, but also provide a way to design your programs with knowledge of your
existing infrastructure.
That means knowing your resources, your buildings, your service delivery sites, and whether you
can sustain pre-incident service levels.
As a mental health or substance use provider, you have a whole cadre of people dependent
upon your services.
It's important to match recovery issues with the resource needs, and to match a continuity
of operations strategy as you bring on new services.
Think about how to sustain those services.
Understanding the mental health needs of an affected population will always vary by the
scope, size, and severity of the disaster.
For example, disaster survivors may be at greater risk because of their exposure.
Keep in mind that the individual who has the exposure is not the only one affected - so
is his or her whole household.
Response workers may also be at risk of burnout.
Structure, leadership, and clear communication can assist with the potential for burnout.
People, including your response workers, need information in a way that is effective and
meaningful to them.
and it is important that they know the command structure during a response effort.
You must have sufficient staffing when addressing disaster behavioral health needs.
Otherwise, the needs of survivors may overwhelm the responders.
The disaster behavioral health planning process includes many components, and there may be
times when you are exhausted and would prefer not to plan.
You must also remain judicious when involving people, so that they don't get burned out
from the planning process.
However, ultimately, it is recommended that you keep the planning active and partners
engaged throughout the course of the calendar year.
This concludes the Services Assessment video within the Promising Practices series.
The other videos in this series will explore each of the standards that can enhance your
state disaster behavioral health plan.
To view an expanded version of this video, go to www.samhsa.gov/dtac/webinars-podcasts
and scroll down to the Promising Practices in Disaster Behavioral Health Planning series.
Established by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the
Disaster Technical Assistance Center (DTAC) supports SAMHSA's efforts to prepare states,
territories, and tribes to deliver an effective mental health and substance use-related response
to disasters.
For training and technical assistance inquiries, you can call SAMHSA DTAC toll-free at 1–800–308–3515
or email dtac@samhsa.hhs.gov, or you can visit www.samhsa.gov/dtac.
Before we conclude, we'd like to give a special thanks to Dr. Tony Speier, who contributed
the original content for this video.