Post on 11-Oct-2020
transcript
Colorado Community Inclusion Workgroup
8/30/16
12:45 p.m. MST
Captioned By: Nicole, Purple Communications, Inc.
"This text is being provided in a rough draft format.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in
order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a
totally verbatim record of the proceedings."
>> Hi, how are you?
>> Hello, we're not going to start the meeting quite yet but
in case there's somebody on the phone, we want to let you know we
are here, we'll be ready to start in about 5 minutes probably. We're
just in the new space and want to give folks a chance to join us.
Thanks so much.
>> Hello, everyone. Speaking to everybody in the room, as well
as anybody who has joined us on the phone, thank you so much for
joining us for this fourth and actually last of the community
inclusion workgroup meetings for its inaugural year. So I just
wanted to start off by saying thank you so very, very much for being
a part of this group, whether you've been here from the beginning
for all of the meetings, whether you were a part of our -- whether
you were part of our survey that started us off to better understand
what communities would be interested in, in terms of training, in
terms of exercise, in terms of how connected they feel to emergencies,
or whether you're here joining us for the very first time. I feel
like I learn something every single day. I work on this project every
time we host a new meeting, and so as we go around introducing
ourselves, I want to make mention of a running list that we have had
of inclusive meeting practices. I think it's a great thing to learn
every day what makes it more possible for different people to
participate in the way that is most comfortable for them. So as we
go around introducing our names, our preferred pronouns, please also
add any accommodations that we can make in this meeting to make it
easier for you to participate. And then if there has been any
highlights in the last year, in terms of either work that you've seen,
works that you've been a part of, that really speaks to the effort
towards better community inclusion, whether that's specifically in
emergencies or just something you're seeing happening where you live.
Because I think I've said this before probably, but no disaster
happens in a vacuum. So the good foundations that we lay in
day-to-day programs, that we work for in areas outside of emergencies
ultimately help us during emergencies as well. So I'll go first.
My name is Amy. I prefer her, she, and hers. And something that
I've been particularly excited about above and beyond this workgroup
is the opportunity to speak with either each of you individually or
to reach out to you as a group to better understand how we can improve,
especially upcoming opportunities like exercises, and make them more
available for members of our public to participate in. And we have
one of those coming up in the end of June. So I'm really excited
to continue working with this workgroup over the next year, to make
the most of that learning experience the best we way can.
So Jamie, do you mind if I turn to you next?
>> Fine. I'm Jamie pledger. I'm new. My first meeting. I'm
a behavioral health provider Saturday the Colorado coalition for the
homeless, and I guess inclusion at my work, I work at the medical
clinic, integrated care, and just really getting access to care and
removing a lot of barriers has been a wonderful thing sand also
exposure to a lot of barriers and just kind of the reality of it all.
And I'm new.
>> And we're very excited to have Jamie here today as one of
our featured partners doing a quick presentation about some of the
work that she's already encountered in her short time.
>> Good afternoon. My name is Henry Mitchell. I am from mental
health partners in boulder. I'm the emergency manager master
coordinator. I prefer, he, him, his. You can also call me sire or
your highness.
[ Laughter ]
>> Wait a minute.
>> Some inclusion that I've witnessed and have been a part of
as well are the boulder county fire exercises earlier this year and
two months following that, the actual cold springs wildfire that we
had north of Netherlands. And there was really, really good to work
with all of those folks who were helping to respond and just seeing
different active inclusion, not only with our access and punctual
needs group, but with other organizations as well.
>> Henry is also one of our featured partners today and I'm
really excited to hear from him, because he has received kudos from
members of our disabilities advocacy groups and others about how
access and functional needs were well-considered during that
wildfire. So great to have you here.
>> Your highness.
>> Yes. Thank you for coming, your highness.
>> I'm from the Asian Pacific development center which is a
mouthful so we say APDC. I'm an integrated care manager there. Last
fiscal year I was a primary coordinator and I'm transitioning to
backup. We have a new coordinator her name is Ruth. She'll be here
at future meetings. I work at a community mental health center and
we practice integrated care and we primarily serve Asian refugees
and immigrants so what we do every day is work on inclusive practices,
making sure a population with a lot of different functional needs
are able to get the health care they deserve. In terms of what we're
looking forward to, inclusion-wise, I'm looking forward to working
with the red cross to adapt their disaster preparedness training.
That will be cool and really needed. And I know Amy has provided
some guidance and we're excited to participate in full-scale exercise
and see how APDC can participate in ways to make more inclusive that
are around for our population.
>> That's great. I've already learned so much from you about
not just what happened in the immediate moment during disasters but
how do you follow up with community afterwards. Because long after
the so-called disaster is over, the community is feeling the ripple
effects of it for a long time.
I wanted to point out, we're using CART services today, somebody
is providing those services remotely, that's real-time captioning,
I forget what the A stands for.
>> It's called communication access real time translation.
>> So it is a way to have the, all of the spoken word that's
happening right here in the meeting, and actually Candice, I should
let you explain it. It's a way to be captured remotely and sent via
a link to people who are deaf and hard of hearing to read while
everything is happening. And this is a new thing for us, but just
to make sure that everything is audible, we have these nice
microphones up in the ceiling. One of our inclusive practices, speak
with clarity, volume, one at a time. It's good for all of us to keep
the pace of the meeting going well. So thank you.
Great.
>> I'm Peggy Spalding and I work for the state unit on aging
health and human services and I work with caregivers, I work with
the area agencies on aging. I work with respite services, and the
other thing I work with that I would like to see in the inclusion,
the dementia friendly Denver. So the dementia population. And I'm
her, she.
>> I'm Julia beans. I'm with assistant technology partners.
We provide information training about all the assistive devices that
people with disabilities are to receive in all disabilities. So we
know a lot of the different technologies.
>> So I'm guessing I'm impressed with all the increase in
numbers. And they just keep growing in all of the meetings. So I'm
just really impressed that more and more people are getting on the
band wagon, making a huge difference. And the developmental
disabilities council has contacted me and they're interested in doing
a whole lot more. So we'll see what happens.
>> Excellent.
>> I'm Melanie Roth. I work at the state health department in
the health facilities in emergency medical services division. I
always mention dementia as being something we're interested in, but
our goal is to make sure that Colorado and visitors to our state get
safe and quality health care, and that includes during emergencies
and anything that we can do to help people in Colorado to access a
shelter or any kind of emergency environment safely and respectfully.
She and her is fine. The networking and learning about different
programs, learning about planning and the best practices and
challenges of working with individuals that have access and
functional needs and other needs, that's been great. And I have been
thinking about that video that we watched at the last meeting, I
thought it had a lot of real actionable take-aways and thought it
might be something that we could share with our staff. And lastly,
September is preparedness month. So we're planning to do some
individual messaging to our staff. Individual preparedness and also
to help facilities several times during the month. If anybody has
any suggestions.
>> Thank you. I'm Dana Goldsmith I'm with the independent
center in Colorado springs and my title is emergency programs
coordinator. So my job is to bridge the gap between the ADA and
emergency management. Right now I'm a unique breed because I'm the
only one in the state. So I work -- I worked with a consumer
yesterday, all the way up to national people calling me from other
states asking me what we're doing and how they can do it. So city,
county, state, whatever end of the ladder I'm needed right now. Our
overarching goal is to get more people like me around the state, that
I'm not doing it alone. In order to do that, we're building lots
of different preparedness and resiliency programs for people with
access and functional needs in Colorado springs and El Paso county
and kind of test driving some of our ideas to see if they work and
see if they can be implemented across the state. I guess anything
that you want to call me as long as it's nice.
[ Laughter ]
Your highness is fine with me, too. Her Majesty, that's great.
But, yeah. So we have a lot of different programs that we're trying
to get kick started. I'm also putting together a resource list for
people who need durable medical equipment or special transportation
and lots of different things. I could talk for hours about what we're
working on but that's kind of it in a nutshell
>> That's great. And we have so appreciated the leadership that
the independent center has offered from Colorado Springs for a long
time. And it was great to have I think Greg Monk was the person right
before you.
>> And Nick before that.
>> Correct. And it's great to have you all here sharing the
work that you're doing.
>> Hi, my name is Maria and I also work with the Colorado
department of public health and environment. I'm the language
services coordinator. So my work is like really dealing with
inclusion, more people who speak languages other than English and
ASL has always been -- services and points I try to provide to staff
in the department of public health and environment. I'm just trying
to broaden my scope and learn from people like Candice about what
that means that it's not limited to ASL and there are other needs
and other technologies sand I can take what I learn here and try to
further implement it with staff.
>> And Maria has been tremendous in helping our department
better understand how we can expedite services like language services
during a disaster when everything else is in chaos and we're just
trying to figure out how do we move systems that typically move kind
of slowly at a faster pace to meet the needs of our community.
>> My name is Carrie Roberts and I work here at FEMA and my role
is all before the disaster. My role is in emergency preparedness.
And I've had the good pleasure of working with a number of you in
the past. So I'm happy to be here to kind of ultimately mind -- mine
this knowledge base for places where we can practice our preparedness
together.
>> It's hard to understand me. I'm from the independent center.
>> Thank you. We're so happy to have you, and I'm sorry --
>> Thank you.
[ Laughter ]
>> I'm Candice Alder for the Colorado commission for the deaf
and hard of hearing. I'm hard of hearing myself. I work with
Matthew and I used to live in Colorado Springs and I worked for the
rocky mountain center for 12 years so I'm considered an EBA
specialist. I was also involved, myself personally, with the black
forest fire. It hit my neighborhood when I was living in Colorado
Springs and I was stuck in a flash flood also a month later. So I
have some personal experience with disaster as well. I recently went
to the airport air disaster exercise and participated with that and
I found out that being hard of hearing is a death sentence. That's
why Matthew and myself have the jobs that we have. People just don't
understand how to work with us. And a lot of times they're supposed
to be the ones staying calm, but they recognize oh, you have a hearing
loss, you're deaf, you're hard of hearing. I don't know what to do
and they panic. That's why I participate in a lot of these exercises
is to try to educate the emergency responders how to interact with
the deaf and hard of hearing. Right now I'm actually working with
the fire department who is involved with that exercise to provide
them training on how to interact with people who are deaf and hard
of hearing so that we have a real disaster that happens, and you have
someone who is hard-of-hearing or Deaf, they'll know what to do.
Chances are they will have somebody who is hard-of-hearing, because
seniors, as you are already aware, make up the biggest part of that
population. As we age, our hearing declines. So I think it's good
to have us. Thank you for having us.
I also wrote down about getting it right. Funny enough, I was
a part of the production of that at my old job. And I will say -- some
of it is a little bit stereotypical. For example, the mime is a
little bit offensive. So I just wanted to point that out. But if
you would like us to be included in the training on interacting with
people, we'll be happy to come to you to provide training in person
and help.
Also, someone mentioned interpreters. We have an interpreter
list on our website of all certified interpreters. So if you're
having trouble finding one, you can contact us:
>> A huge, huge resource in the room and we're so glad to have
you, Candice. Michael?
>> My name is Michael bean. I work in the same office as Amy,
the office of emergency preparedness and response for the department
of public health. I am the training and exercise coordinator, and
I'm glad that you brought up that you went to the exercise -- I
participated in many exercises across the state every year, and
that's definitely something that I've identified that many times they
struggle and they don't try to even practice it. But I have seen
an increase in the past couple of years of the desire to involve the
community inclusion deaf group more in exercises. For example, back
in May I participated in what's called a C step exercise. Chemical
stock pile emergency preparedness program down in Pueblo where the
chemical stockpile they have there. It's a big army exercise. I
was sent to a boon home to evaluate practices for a home for
developmentally disabled folks and they practiced a fire drill.
Just getting out or sheltering in place. So it was nice to see in
a big exercise, they're still trying to take that into account. And
so part of my job is assisting, for example, what this big exercise
we're doing next year, in helping incorporate those kinds of aspects
into our exercise. Because while it's important to practice putting
out fires and handing out medicine, it's important that we can do
it with everyone. And do it effectively.
>> We're really glad to have Michael here as we continue a
conversation we started at our May meeting about how it is that we
can either make recommendations, get involved in our own local areas,
or come together and come up with other ideas about how to build better
inclusion into the exercises that we have coming up. May I?
Okay, perfect.
>> So this is Cheryl Garcia, and unfortunately there is not
enough time to describe everything she does or who she's with. But
she is an emergency preparedness inclusion extraordinaire all
throughout the state. Everyone knows Cheryl. As far as her
experience with community inclusion she -- oh: Recently she was
involved in a decontamination exercise with the national guard and
involved somewhere around 200 national guard people. And during
this exercise, sorry I come from the emergency management world which
is very male centered. They always say national guardsmen. I'm
trying to say national guards folks. Trying to be more inclusive
myself. So Cheryl decided that during this exercise she would leave
her iPad in the car. And if you know the iPad is very important to
Cheryl. But she had a similar experience that you had at the airport,
that the folks in the national guard struggled. This did not know
what to do, how to communicate and they were very hands-on with her
and kind of this is where you go. All over, touchy-feely, you go
here, this is what you do. They didn't ask her, they didn't try.
And so hopefully in the future exercises can improve. And she
mentions in here she is working with a group that is starting planning
for the annual emergency management conference they put on at the
end of year in February and hopefully community inclusion will be
a part of that as well.
As far as pronouns go, she says she doesn't need your highness,
she just prefers princess. Princess Cheryl.
>> Designated names are also welcome.
Wonderful, also on the speaker committee.
>> Fantastic. I am hoping that folks at integrated conferences
as well as maybe something that this workgroup sets up, possibly not
this year, but in a future year, we could create a conference where
space is made to really turn the training in the other direction from
the community to the systems. And I think that would be an excellent,
excellent opportunity.
>> She wants to tell everyone that I have a little baby. Which
I do. And I love showing pictures. If anyone wants to see baby
pictures. I won't force them on you.
>> It's great.
>> Thank you for telling everyone.
>> It's her way of telling everyone to make you tell everyone.
>> That's wonderful. Has anyone joined us on the phone besides
our CART services folks?
All right. We will endeavor to have conference call capability
at every meeting from here on out. We also have an Adobe connect
right now that is just sharing the agenda currently but it will make
it possible to share some of the content of the meeting with folks
at a distance.
>> Do you mind to make a request when people take turns to say
their names --
>> Absolutely. Great request. This is Amy again. And as we
try to expand the reach of this workgroup, I'm very excited that we
have a connection now in Durango, connections in Pueblo that are with
the Colorado crest disability coalition who have been working with
us for a long time, it's great. So if you have compatriots in other
parts of the state that you think would enjoy being a part of this,
we really welcome that and we will do our best to make opportunities
available, both remotely and especially if we have a conference-type
event, make it possible for travel scholarships to really facilitate
that geographic inclusion as well.
So at this point in the meeting, hearing that there aren't other
folks on the phone, I just wanted to take an opportunity to say thank
you. As I said right at the very beginning, we have been meeting
now for a year, and as a part of this workgroup, we have had over
35 community leaders participate in one way or another, again,
whether that was the initial survey coming to a single meeting or
coming to consistent meetings across the way. And deep gratitude
to Carie and Cheryl who have stepped up to host the meetings. Another
big thank you to the independent center, to Cheryl again and then
today to Jamie and Henry for coming to present. I think it is much
better to hear from one another than to hear from a single voice at
any one time. So I think it's made these workgroup meetings
particularly helpful. I'm going to show you a web page that many
of you may have visited at this point over the course of the year,
especially with this workgroup's involvement. We have had the
opportunity to create a community inclusion workgroup page that sits
within the larger community inclusion in Colorado web page at our
department. It's very rudimentary introduction to some of the
efforts and interests of making community inclusion a wider state
effort. It connects to the maps that are being shared with a lot
of local public health and emergency response partners. And then
we have our page down here for the community inclusion and health
groups and when you click on it, it takes you to our web page where
all of the minutes and documents and shared resources from our past
meetings now show up. This has become a huge resource. We actually
did an analytics of this web page and saw that people are spending
on age 3.5 minutes on the page, which for anybody who does analytics,
that is huge. The click away is a much less often. And for this
community inclusion workgroup page, more than a third of the folks
who visit the first page actually come to visit this page as well.
So we're really excited. Word is getting out about this work group
and we really hope that that helps people reach out to you as community
experts and just continues to build the interest and the
participation in these kinds of efforts.
In addition to the web page, and probably found in the web page,
this group has produced survey results about the interest and needs
and expert tease of training and exercise in our communities. We
have a running inclusive meetings practice list that has been
requested by other folks to think about what they can do to make
meetings more inclusive. You all have shared tremendous partner
ideas that have expanded the reach of this group. We are starting
to solicit those extra participation ideas. We'll continue with
that today. And they're, I think, just as we went around, I'm hearing
so much more, as Julia said, just people and places where this
conversation is taking place. So I come to you today with an
unbelievable amount of gratitude and I've actually got certificates
for everyone to thank you for being a part of this group this year.
Even those of you who are here for the very first time. But if you
are ever interested, I have a list of all 35-plus folks that have
now been a part of this workgroup. And you're just champions in the
state. And I really -- I really many so grateful to have connections
to you professionally, but especially this summer, after the Orlando
shooting happened at Pulse nightclub, I was grateful to reach out
to you personally on that day. Because that is the antithesis of
what we're doing here. Having people that recognize the value and
worth and knowledge and expertise of every person in our community
are people I want to surround myself with. And I have so much
thankfulness to offer you. And no that I've worked myself up, I am
ready to hand this part of the meeting over to our featured partners
for today, starting with Jamie. Is there anything I can hand out
for you or?
>> Jamie: I can do it.
>> Amy:
>> Jamie: And this is Jamie now speaking.
So I'm passing around, it's really like my notes, so it won't
make a ton of sense to you right now but I'll try and go through it.
Just a little about my background, like I said my name is Jamie
pledger, I'm a behavioral health provider at the health center, works
with the Colorado coalition for the homeless. I actually just
graduated with my master's from the international disaster
psychology program.
[ Applause ] yeah for me. It's very exciting.
So actually with Amy, it's my first year is kind of how I got into
this. And last year I interned up in the Colorado refugee center.
I have some experience with refugees as well. I forgot to mention
my pronouns. She and her are great for me. Yeah, that's kind of
my background. So today I just thought I would describe a little
about CCH which is Colorado coalition for the homeless, so if you
hear me saying that, that's what I mean. And bear in mind this is
my fifth week at the organization and I am very much still learning.
But I thought I would start with the mission of CCH which is to work
collaboratively towards the prevention of homelessness towards
lasting solutions for homeless individuals throughout Colorado. So
the clinic I work at is located at park and 22nd downtown and if you've
ever been in that area, we kind of own two blocks downtown, which
is pretty cool for an organization. So we have a lot of great -- I
think the important part of our mission is to create lasting
solutions, so that's why we try and attack the issue from multiple
points, because as you know, homelessness is often chronic and
requires a lot of services, acute management and wrap-around
services.
So some of the services that we provide. Health care. The main way
we provide that is the health clinic and it is integrated and I love
it and we'll go through that more. But we do have some offices
too -- and we have one at St. Frances hospital. We also have a health
outreach program. I actually got to spend the day on it. It hopped
around Denver, that's why they call it that, I don't know. But what's
really neat about that is they have a nurse, a medical provider and
a behavioral health provider and they can line up. One of them is
at a church, I don't know if you know the church. It's the great
church that provides showers and laundry services for the homeless.
They give food out every day and the hops goes and they can get medical
attention as well. The hop is able to provide medication and stuff
that is kind of hard to access.
We also do provide management services which are very overburdened
as you can imagine. But they're trying. And we do have housing
services. Which I'm going to talk about a little later about the
burden placed on the housing program. Upwards of 15 apartment units
which I was shocked about. I didn't realize. So if you ever see
the renaissance brand of housing, it's actually the Colorado
coalition for the homeless housing. So that's pretty cool. And
fort lion, I don't know if any of you know of fort lion, but it's
a residential program down in Pueblo so the homeless can go and stay
for up to two years, so it's a great option for someone looking for
housing. And we send a lot of people who are recovering from
substance abuse down there, because it is a clean, sober environment.
It can be really helpful for people who are struggling in Denver,
especially where downtown where access is readily available.
Sometimes we have trouble sending them back because it's so isolated
down there. And sometimes the housing once they're out in Pueblo.
So that can be difficult.
And then there's housing first, I believe it's mostly for people who
have felony on the record and who have trouble otherwise getting into
housing. And then pack is specifically a program for people who are
chronically homeless.
Resources, I'm pretty sure I'm missing a bunch of others but that's
kind of what I know about.
And then since I work at south street, it's a little easier for me
to talk about that. Like I said, it's integrated care. What we
offer there is primary care, behavioral health, which is what I do,
psychiatry, you can get psychiatric meds, they can see an eye doctor,
go to the dentist, an in-house pharmacy and we do provide substance
abuse treatment. So it's pretty comprehensive care. And what is
nice about our model is they can come in and pretty much do it all
in the same day. It's a very long, frustrating day for them as you
can imagine. It's a lot of paperwork. But when you think about
psychiatry, having a wait list of three months, then the last year
or maybe up to a year it's pretty often they might be able to access
that in a day. So we deal with Medicaid, because of Medicaid
expansion, I think that's really increased the number of people that
we serve, so we're actually having a hard time keeping up, but it's
a great thing. More people are insured.
And then just some like, we do have a rapid response team at our
clinic, if someone is in crisis, either a mental health crisis or
medical crisis, normally that will result sending people to the ER
but what's so great about that is people can come in and, you know,
what they may have experienced on the street previously they're
experiencing in the clinic, at least they're being monitored while
they're going through the crisis. For example, the other day we
actually broke the record for how many ambulances we had in a single
day. Normally we have at least one. Kind of like, I mean, it's the
nature of dealing with the population, there's a lot of serious issues
going on. But one of the best things we actually had an overdose
in the bathroom but because we had medical providers there, they were
able to resuscitate the person and get them to the ER. So very good
thing, it's all put in place to help provide them with the best
services possible.
Okay. Any questions about all of that?
>> This is Peggy. The house scene, what's the wait time?
>> I was going to talk about that.
>> Peggy: Do you have it down here?
>> Jamie: I may not but I'll talk about it now. It's very,
very long. As you can imagine Denver prices are through the roof.
I was doing a presentation the other day which was talking about the
political side of things, which is really getting into the ability
to provide affordable housing, it's a huge issue. So, for example,
path, the wait list is a minimum year and a half. I think section
8 right now is also around that wait list. So it's really hard. It's
so hard to sit in the room can you get into housing yeah but you're
going to need to wait a year and a half and then thinking about a
year and a half in a shelter or just on the street it's hard.
>> Amy: This is Amy. It sounds like emergencies are
definitely intersecting the housing market. We've had a lot of folks
driven down to the metro area from some of our more northern cities
because of recent wildfires or flooding. But at the same time,
sometimes emergencies can be either that crucible space or flexible
space. Do you see a place where there could be either learning in
both directions, something you could recommend during disasters, for
this community either in terms of housing or something else that has
been done during emergencies that you wish could carry over into more
stable systems?
>> A hard one to say right off the bat, this is Jamie speaking
again, sorry. I think I'll have to get back to you on that. In the
bottom section where consideration for the homeless community really
meant during like a homeless disaster so I can speak to that a little
bit. But one of the things that just popped into my head when we
were talking with medication, and I know that in psychological first
aid, that's one of the first things we're trained to ask is do you
have medication that you need, that you're missing, when you're
forced to evacuate. And with the homeless population, I would say
that a very high portion of them are medication. That is very
important for them to have. And so I think that's more readily built
into disaster response than necessarily like a shelter for the
homeless. It's nice that we're here, but I don't know how other
cities are doing with homeless populations in terms of medical access
and medication access and stuff like that. And this is Denver, even
in Colorado it could be worse than other parts of the state. Not
quite sure how it's going in Colorado Springs for example, or Pueblo
or things like that.
>> Amy: This is Amy again. So one thing that happens
especially during a public health disaster that maybe need to get
a new kind of medicine to the public at large, are there ways of
outreaches to the homeless community that you would want emergency
managers or planners to know about, the best way to connect with that
community?
>> Jamie: I don't know if it's what you're referring to, but
last week very convenient timing, from Denver public health come in
to tell us that we're actually a pod for dispensing medication during
a disaster. So that is fantastic. We were kind of joking we were
told we're a closed pod which means we only provide to our population,
but we serve the homeless, but we're not going to tell someone who
comes in you don't look homeless, we're not going to turn anyone away
so we'll probably function as an open pod.
>> I wouldn't tell Denver public health that.
>> Yeah. So that's good. That's a great access point for
homeless. Especially with that open and closed, it's something what
if they're staying at the Samaritan house but they haven't
established health care at the clinic, won't be able to turn them
away.
>> Mike: This is Mike. To build off Amy's question, in an
incident like that where you had to open a pod, would your
organization be in charge of spreading the news going out and telling
the homeless, come here? Or would that be the responsibility of the
city government to go out and direct them to you?
>> Jamie: This is Jamie. Trying to think about what I was told
in the training. There's another guy in the organization I'm
supposed to link up with who does a lot of disaster preparedness.
I'm not exactly sure what that would be, but something that I would
talk about is just communication with the homeless is difficult in
general, just because of access to phones, they're their transient
state. So I think that it would be most likely up to us. But I'll
get back to you on.
>> Do you have a question?
>> My question is kind of similar to his question,
communication. How do you communicate with the population. But
I'll expand on that question a little bit and ask how also do you
communicate with people who are homeless but also have other things
going on? For example, they have other limitations access to
communication?
>> Jamie: Yeah. Part of the deaf or hard of hearing, I haven't
had a personal experience yet. I imagine there's something set in
place, but I think it's a good consideration for me to take back and
ask about that. Do know that we use interpretation phone services,
for example if they don't speak English, so we do have those. But
other than that, I'm not quite sure. So I'll have to ask about that.
>> Just the communication issue, I can just look at what I was
going to say.
So a lot of our population don't actually have phones, or they
lose them or their phone number is changing a lot, so it's a huge
issue. One thing that is word of mouth, one thing I've learned is
that the homeless community is actually pretty tight knit. If you
ask them, they probably know of the other person that you're looking
for. So that population is probably our best resource for reaching
out to people within the population. And it's complicated for sure,
but I have also heard a lot from some of my clients that it's a
supportive community so they do try and help each other out. So part
of me thinks that word of mouth is the most effective way of reaching
out. Because there are people there that we're not aware of that
some of our clients probably do know of. But communication is a huge
issue in general. So definitely open to hearing suggestions for that
or what you would think. Yeah?
>> Amy: This is Amy. I would echo that. I have actually been
trying to learn a little bit more about a while ago what was called
the Colfax hotline, the way that information traveled through the
homeless community via Colfax avenue here in Denver. And more than
anything, I think what then become really apparent is that it is
important to have somebody who is a member of that community part
of conversations wherever possible. Because, yeah. I've heard the
exact same thing about word of mouth in that regard.
>> Jamie: This is Jamie. One thing, the last four weeks you
can imagine and we do have a lot of staff that are either previous
clients or have been previously homeless, so that's a great way for
us to reach out too is they have connections in the community often
and kind of put themselves in the situation more so than some of us
can. I'll go through some of the considerations I wrote down for
the homeless during a disaster.
One thing I thought I would briefly touch on is the homelessness
definition. Because I think it's sometimes we imagine homeless
people on a street. But it can obviously be staying in a shelter,
it can be being evicted from a place and not having a place to stay
within 14 days of that eviction and you would be considered homeless.
Staying in a place that's not meant for humans is also considered
homelessness. And basically existing in a shelter where they stay
up to 90 days. They could have had housing for three months and still
be considered homeless. Also couch surfing, that can be considered
homelessness. Just some things to think about there.
I wrote down survival mode because I was thinking how I would
react if I were homeless and a disaster happen. I think our
population is in survival mode all the time. And that can affect
their future-oriented thinking as far as planning ahead. They might
not really be planning that far ahead, they're just providing day
to day, that might affect how they respond in a disaster situation.
Hyper vigilant, because with respect to the population has a lot of
trauma. And their response to being evacuated or something might
be kind of difficult. So just imaging better interventions with
them, TSA being helpful. Just trust of the system and other people.
They're a population that often gets taken advantage of. I think
in just my short time at the clinic, that's what I've learned. I
wrote down medication, so we already talked about that. Super
important. Also within the population -- thinking about withdrawal
if they don't have access.
>> What is TSA?
>> Psychological first aid. PFA.
>> Do you need to say more about that? You're good. Great.
So I was thinking about withdrawal, for example. If someone
has been using alcohol regularly and for somebody in a disaster it
doesn't allow them to keep using alcohol, it can be super dangerous,
as you all probably know.
If you try to take that back, it's going to be a big issue.
Property. Think about how you can best manage moving them with their
things, if they can evacuate. And health hazard, I've seen a lot
of clients with bed bugs or body lice, so just thinking about if you're
going to have an isolation area for people who do come in with those
type of things.
I just wrote resilience in the end. The population is really
resilient. If they're surviving on the streets, they have to be.
I like to keep that in mind also. And community perceptions, I was
thinking about what would happen if, for example, if there was a
community all needed to go to the shelter and the homeless were held
with the more general population and depending on that reaction, what
kind of complications that could bring up. I don't think there's
any secret about sort of attitude towards the homeless in the general
population can be quite negative. And so just kind of considering
that ahead of time might be helpful. Don't mean to say that's all
people's perceptions or that it's necessarily going to go poorly or
well, but it's just something to think about. This is my ramblings.
I'm sorry, this is all over the place.
>> I love your ramblings. This is Cari and I was at red cross
prior to being here. I wonder if there's opportunities for you to
help red cross, from understanding from what you were just talking
about. When those shelters are opened, those are meant to be for
anyone who is affected by the disaster, but there is certainly a gap
in training for those workers, who we should remember are volunteers,
in knowing with all the different populations we're talking about,
sort of what that looks like. So there may be opportunities there,
I don't know if that would be near or otherwise, but in looking at
offering some training or even some tips. More frequent our
disasters become, we used to plan for about 10% of the population
would need sheltering, and that number is increasing. Because the
sheltering is more frequent. So sisters and neighbors and whoever's
couch we were sleeping on because of the disaster are tired of it.
So more people are come to shelters and staying for longer. I wonder
if that's an opportunity to make those connections if you don't
already have.
>> Jamie. This is Jamie and I think that would be great. I
would love that.
>> Amy: Any other questions?
>> This is Matthew, I want to make a comment. Denver -- so okay.
Part of it. Provide -- but they can't communicate. They could stay
a month to recover. A cycle. I see that all the time. Make
reasonable accommodations -- they get away with it.
>> Sometimes the shelters are run by churches, they're exempt
from being able to provide services. What Matthew and ADA says that
church-run facilities are exempt from ADA requirements. If they're
run by state agencies or if they're receiving federal money or state
money, that's when it becomes responsibility to provide effective
communications. But the problem is they say we don't have the
funding to provide effective communication. So the expectations of
shelters itself is not clear to that person. So it's easy for them
to break the rules, because they're not communicating clearly to that
individual what is required of them. And also, who wants to go to
a place that doesn't want to communicate with you. I mean, that's
another thing. You already feel left out. Being homeless, being
transient, you already feel rejected in a lot of ways, and then you
add a communication barrier on top of that, it becomes a no-win
situation.
>> Even go camping -- I'm good, I'll go camping. We had a TTY.
And then provide video phones or we cannot have it. We have Internet
that provides free video phones in the lobby. We only have one. But
at this point --
>> Amy: Yeah, this is Amy. What I heard in that was it goes
above and beyond what the rules are about what you must accommodate.
There is so much to culture and how we get used to the wide diversity,
how we invite the wide diversity of our state into all spaces so that
in those emergent situations, when people are having just that
increase in anxiety, that increase in just hyper arousal, we don't
fall back on acting scared around one another, and not
problem-solving, even when there are so many different excuses that
people use to not make inclusion a priority during that time. So
I think the effort, not just to enforce and to promote the use of
actual policies and actual rules that are out there, but to really
facilitate relationships is the only way that we're going to get
people to step beyond what the rules are saying to them at this point.
>> This is Candice. I want to piggyback on what Amy just said.
I agree 1000%. The biggest barrier I think a lot of times we face
is just other people's attitudes. Straight up.
>> Yeah, this is Jamie. I think your point about the brutal
cycle is so well-taken. I mean, it's a problem in everyday life,
so it's going to be a huge problem during a disaster. And it's
certainly a huge problem with the homeless population. A brutal
cycle. I think it's a problem with all of our population. Just when
thinking about when I worked with refugees last year and spend them
to specialty referrals who are supposed to provide interpretation
but just wouldn't and our clients would come back and say well, they
didn't have an interpreter so I didn't get to have my MRI, which was
like pretty important.
>> That's what we deal with so much. So what you're saying
resonates. And Amy your point about the relationship to try to get
people to change their attitude and doing more what is required of
them, that's the only way we've had any success in helping address
that particular issue. It's just getting people to know you and your
communities and getting them to care. And that's hard to do. It's
really the only way we've been able to address that.
>> This is Carrie, what I find working with community partners
is the desire to be inclusive, the knowledge of how to do that.
That's why a group like this is helpful to say I'm willing to come
in or give you a list of interpreters. I think more and more it may
be a fear of not doing it correctly, of not providing correctly or
wholly or whatever the thing is, and that sometimes looks like I don't
care, when really it's I don't want to screw it up. I don't know
what I'm doing. So I think it's incumbent upon all of us to help
the folks we work with to know who to call and know how to do that,
be patient and not have any gotcha about the work that you're doing.
Because I think there's a lot of gotcha you didn't do it right, and
I say that sitting in the government, but it shouldn't be that. It
should be here let me show you how to do the things we're asking you
to do. Not because there's a rule about it, but because this person
isn't getting the information they need to live their life. Disaster
or not disaster.
>> This is Maria. I just want to underscore the importance of
communication across any and all languages when you're talking about
languages and there's so many similarities in themes that you could
build upon those so when you're working with folks you don't have
to worry about we're training for specifically ADA or we're training
for refugees. We're training in terms of communication, this is what
you do. And this is the process that you follow. You build on so
much what you said in terms of fear and not feeling appreciated, not
feeling wanted. Again, these are themes that are common across all
racial and ethnic groups, and there's some themes that you can build
on to increase training across.
>> Universal design. And this is Amy. And that's why we've
really been pushing this move that I think public health maybe
especially has been a little bit slow to pick up on, which is a move
away from the language of vulnerable populations to this idea of
accessing functional needs, to this idea of community inclusion.
Because what's become very apparent is that everybody needs to be
able to do certain things during a disaster. And so if you're
planning for communication and inclusive communication, then you're
going to, by certain strategies, not just help one population, but
help many populations all at the same time. And the only way that
we're going to know whether we've hit that mark is if we have those
good relationships where we get the feedback from community members
to say yeah, that worked. Or this is something that we can do better
next time.
>> I just want to increase and build on Amy is it's not only
to have those good relationships -- I don't have to do this because
it's a federal requirement. Moving beyond those you have to -- our
goal is to have preparedness. Our goal is to have good outcomes.
Our goal is to prevent homelessness. Those goals, overarching goals
across agencies that really -- what's the word? Goes beyond the
finger pointing or the tallying.
>> We call them best practices too. A little beyond that, but,
you know, when we talk to people when we're doing training to health
care providers, we say yes, this is the regulation. This is the
minimum that you have to do. You have to do this minimum. But we
try to also talk about best practices, what is the best practice.
This might be what you have to do, but this is the best way to provide
inclusion. To communicate with everyone. This is how best to be
prepared for anybody that comes in.
>> Amy: This is Amy one more time. Jamie, thank you so much
for facilitating such a great conversation.
[ Applause ]
I would like to also make sure that we have time for Henry to do a
quick just informal conversation about some of the experiences that
he has recently had both with recent disasters but also was the access
and functional needs group that he is a part of in Boulder. So I'm
going to sign back up so I can pull up some assessment tools that
their team has been working with to bring attention to access and
functional needs early on during disasters in Boulder but I also have
a few copies, so I'll make sure that there's at least one copy on
each table, but hopefully it will be up here on the computer in just
a second as well.
Very quickly while we're in a quick transition, there is food for
everybody in the room, so please take a moment to grab water or food
or anything like that.
So, this is Henry Mitchell from Boulder mental health partners. And
thank you all very much for your time.
I just want to speak a little about how access and functional needs
team, AFN team as we call them. This team has gone through a number
of different names and forms, but as it stands now, we are the AFN
team of Boulder. And this team is comprised of members from
community services department of Boulder county, public health, and
mental health partners as well.
In the past during exercises and actual emergencies and response to
disasters, we definitely noticed that there were some needs that were
being overlooked. And there was some great opportunities for us to
continue to develop our program so that we develop a system that
identifies the needs as they come up. And really does a practical
job of addressing them. So those needs were mostly communication
issues, medical issues, functional independence issues.
Supervision and behavioral health issues as well. And so in
identifying all those needs, we did find that the three Boulder county
organizations that did the most to affect change in an emergency and
to really address those needs were community services, public health
and mental health as well. I want to say that public health was
instrumental and irreplaceable in really pushing this forward.
Public health is the EFS8 lead which means emergency support function
lead, if you're not familiar with some of the EOC lingo. Basically
that means they lead a deaf and lead the response effort on the public
health side. And because of that position, they really do have great
reach, and the work that's done in shelters and exercises and what
not. So Boulder County Public Health was really important in pushing
this forward in developing this tool.
So we did find that -- so there were certain issues with getting folks
resources that they needed. Actually at the shelters. When people
actually got to the final shelter point. So we really worked through
that, and we're looking to find a way to identify these needs before
people even got to the shelters. And as it stands normally when we
have some sort of evacuation order, folks are moved first to an
evacuation point, and then moved to an evacuation shelter after that,
or the evacuation point is turned into a shelter later.
So we found that that was the best place in which we could insert
ourselves and really go to work and identify some of these needs that
our community members have. So this is at the evacuation point,
pretty much the quickest point or the quickest way to access evacuees,
once they have been moved or once that order has been given.
So once the evacuation point is set up, then we call our team together,
and one of us from either community services, public health, or mental
health will gather our tools and go to the evacuation points and go
ahead and look to identify needs there. And one thing about that
is that it's different than going to the evacuation point and setting
up a table. We really wanted to be, I won't say more aggressive,
but we wanted to make sure there were no missed opportunities. And
so what that meant for us was really putting aside that table model
and actually getting into the evacuation point and interacting with
the evacuees. That means active observation of any possible needs,
actually going in and speaking with evacuees and making contact with
our shelter or evacuation point managers, and those who are leading
that effort, as well as other organizations who are there on scene
as well. And so what that does is we are making contact with them
and telling them why we're here, what we do, and that allowed them
to in turn point to any folks who have needs to us, any folks that
we may have missed.
So it's inclusion, not only of the people that we are trying to serve,
but also including other organizations in our efforts as well,
letting them know what we're doing and how they can help us and we
can help them.
So what you have in front of you are the access and functional needs
assessment tools. And there's one at each table. The first one is
the assessment tool. And that is what is used in the immediate. So
if there are folks who are at the evacuation points and they need
something immediately or there's a big, bright, shiny immediate need
that really sticks out to us, we can use this rapid assessment tool
or RAT.
The actual responder is responsible for filling out this form. So
it's not the person who is in need, but it's the actual responder
from public health community services or mental health. We have this
form and we'll walk around and fill it out as we are speaking to the
people.
>> Can we get copies?
>> Absolutely.
And so with this tool, as we are here today, and as we continue
our partnerships in the future, we are more than welcome to any
suggestions for improvement. I myself personally am welcoming any
suggestions for improvement regarding especially the behavioral
health section. So anything that you all have found really useful
in the past or any great ideas that you may have had that you think
will be using for this tool in the future, absolutely let us know.
And we can see it works. That is the rapid assessment tool for
initial use.
And then after that we have an individual assessment tool or
IAT, if you like acronyms. This is a little more in depth but
basically covers a lot of the same needs that we're trying to
identify, communication needs, medical issues, functional
dependence needs and what not. And these tools are worded in a way
that allows the person who's giving this assessment to not just ask
plain, dry, okay, are you unable to relate current living situations,
blah, blah, blah. It allows us to have more of a conversational
relationship with anyone who hears assessing, which really helps in
an emergency situation in a way. We don't want people think they're
being put through a big bureaucratic system. That's why we're
straying from the home table concept. We want to be approachable,
we want people to be comfortable telling us what their needs are.
So one great thing about this is that because it comes from the
ESS8 desk, which is public health, any of these requests that we get
for resources, those can be considered official resource requests.
So as these assessments are being made in the field, these resource
requests are being communicated up to the emergency operation center,
and verified by the emergency ESF8 slash public health desk, and we
can actual put that into an official resource request form, so we
can say we have a need for X amount of resources here. Or we will
see that we have a need when the shelter is being set up for these
resources. And it really allows us to be official, and have an
official record of requests and also really get these requests and
these needs for resources answered and fulfilled in a timely manner.
So it's all kind of a smaller part of a bigger response machine, if
you will.
I think I mentioned communication with shelter managers and
other response groups. We find that that is probably a step that
is overlooked often and can really be leveraged to provide supports
to our folks who need it. If people, if the shelters managers and
volunteers know why you're there and what your capabilities are, then
they can really lend a helping hand in assisting anyone or pointing
someone towards you if we have missed an opportunity to assess someone
and provide someone with resources that are needed.
So are there any questions? Or suggestions?
>> Michael: This is Michael. One challenge that seems to me
is some of the responses on this may be subjective according to who's
recording. For example, has hearing difficulties a red look
different to one person may look yellow to another person. So what
efforts can you take to train or to practice this to make sure that
everybody is filling it out consistently and making sure that
everybody is receiving consistent service?
>> Yeah, absolutely. And that is an issue that we are seeing.
And that is another reason why I'm glad I'm here is to maybe get some
advice and recommendations on that and really how to differentiate
that and make those differences. We would absolutely love any sort
of recommendations for that.
>> Would I be yellow and he be red?
>> Yellow, green, red.
[ Laughter ]
Which one is purple, right?
Yeah, exactly. With this I think that in our effort to identify and
our effort to assess, those are things that can be worked out
hopefully in that conversational relationship that we're trying to
build. So that's where we're hoping to go with that. And really
speak with the person and get an understanding of what their needs
are. But, as I said, if we have any ideas, as far as identifiers,
that you feel would be useful, let us know.
>> I have a question. What does red, yellow, green, tell you
as far as your response to that?
>> Red, yellow, green, we were going off some of the traditional
triage models where red is an immediate need. Yellow is a high need
but not as immediate, not as of right now. And green is a need, but
it's something that is not needed super fast.
>> Maybe not a severity, maybe not a red or a green, but time.
Needs in the next four hours.
>> It would be red all the time because the need to communicate
is vital.
>> Absolutely. We're also thinking about medications. A red
medication need would be someone who has issues with maybe asthma
and they need it now. So that's what we're looking at. But if you
have an inhaler that's almost out and you know you're probably going
to need it in a couple of days, that would be a yellow. So it's more
like a time thing than severity of any particular.
>> Amy: This is Amy. I think what is so interesting about
these tools is it's an effort to create a bridge between the systems
that the emergency services are already using and help articulate,
be an advocate for the community needs in a language that they
recognize. So here's an opportunity for us to put community needs
on the same level as the other resource request needs that come in
during a disaster. So model-wise, I think it's an advocacy in ways
to make it clear that this should be taken as seriously as any
structural or resource need in another way. But at the same time,
I think the room has brought up good examples of why a triage doesn't
always make sense. Or how we could use a triage system to always
say it's red, to make sure that these needs are considered as rapidly
as we possibly can. Because ultimately, the reason we have -- the
reason we have emergency systems, my philosophy anyway, is that we
want disaster events that happen to have as little impact on the
community that we serve as possible. So you better believe that I
think that these sorts of issues are the reddest red that you can
really take into consideration. Because these are the experiences
of people in disaster.
>> This is Maria. I missed the beginning part but I just want
to get the context of the tool. Can you tell me about when this
is -- is this preparedness, is this response? I apologize.
>> Henry: This is Henry. Absolutely. So this is along the
lines of response.
>> Maria: The event has happened.
>> Henry: Right. The event has happened and we have our access
and functional needs team which is comprised of community service
members, mental health and county and representatives from one of
those groups will go to an evacuation point before a shelter is set
up to start with the assessment. So this is during or post-event.
And when we're really getting into the response.
>> Dana: This is Dana. Do you guys give these triage documents
over to your sheltering partner after you've opened so they can
continue care, or do you manage the care from start to finish if they
come to an evacuation?
>> Henry: So sheltering partners, the organization who is
running the shelter?
>> Yeah. If a shelter is determined to be necessary, do you
send that individual to the shelter with this document saying here
are my needs, or does your organization handle this form and all of
the needs that have been assessed from start to finish?
>> Henry: So our organizations handle this form and the needs
identified by this form. Those needs are communicated to the shelter
managers. But that is not what the expectation that those
organizations are obligated to fulfill those needs.
>> Or able.
>> Henry: Or even able to fulfill those needs. As county
governmental organizations and partners of such, you would have
definitely something that is within our ability and that is something
that we are tasked with doing. We want to communicate. So on the
back end, if we took these assessments at the evacuation point and
a shelter is formed later on, we're going to communicate those needs
that we have a certain amount of people officially who have identified
that they may need -- whatever. And we can communicate that to the
shelter managers just so that they know that we're coming and that
those things are taken care of. And thankfully it seems like that
communication takes place at the EOC level -- EFC level? As well
as in the field. That's what happened during the wildfire.
>> This is Melanie. So you track where these people at the
evacuation point are going to be going? They might not all be going
to the same shelter.
>> Henry: That's a piece that we figure out during the
assessments and that actually means a lot to us in our county, because
generally a lot of folks, we don't see a really big shelter population
all the time. A lot of folks I know in the mountains, they probably
have a close-knit relationship with the neighbors. If it's
something down here in the flat lands, folks either have friends or
other resources that they can go to for sheltering. So when we're
doing this, we definitely try to identify, are you going to the
shelter. If not, then let's find a way to get in contact and get
their contact information.
>> This is Maria again. I'm just curious the responders
responsible as a responder, as you're out in the field, what tools
do you have available to you to help you at that moment? Say you're
filling this out and you do come across that has a language need or
a functional need, what happens at that point? Because when that
person is there and you can't look down and fill out that form without
being able to communicate with them. I'm wondering what rapport you
have as a responder with somebody who has a communication need that
makes it difficult --
>> Henry: Absolutely. So we have some support. Granted it
is limited. We do have some support as it worked out in our wildfire
exercise. We have the Boulder County medical reserve corps who fall
as a support organization under public health and therefore the
access and functional needs team. So if it's needed and activated,
we make sure we have someone needed and do these assessments and also
activate the medical reserve corps. With the medical reserve corps
we have people who can provide medical attention and treatment as
needed. There are limited translation opportunities that we have
there, translation resources. If there is a bigger need that's
identified, we do have those resources available to call. But as
it stands, right then and there getting immediately to that
evacuation point, we don't have the robust translation resources that
maybe we would need or we would have. We do have them but we're in
the works.
>> This is Maria again. Just going to throw a suggestion out
there. I was working with Amy and this is one of those things that
you could really -- I think you're safe to assume there's always going
to be a language barrier. So rather than waiting to have to respond,
to be pro active about it. I work with Amy and her team over the
past few years going off of the flood example and thinking about what
things you can have translated ahead of time or available ahead of
time or making it standard practice that as a responder, if I'm going
to go out in the field, I'm going to go out with a phone with
interpretation support. I don't know if there's anything could have
CART services available, just so you have those tools with you as
a responder on the ground so that's not holding you back. So you're
probably going to need it at some point in time regardless -- just
something to consider as part of what the tool that you need to have
with you.
>> Henry. : Absolutely.
>> That segued into a question I have on the first page where
it says hearing issues with no hearing aids. I don't benefit from
hearing aids. We have degenerative disorders that causes me to be
dizzy when wearing hearing aids. I would suggest saying -- what I'm
assuming this means, that they don't have their technology, right,
they didn't bring it. Or something.
>> Right.
>> So I would suggest staying instead doesn't have their hearing
assistive technology.
>> Henry: That's exactly what we want. That's the kind of
feedback I'm looking for. Thank you so much.
>> Dana: This is Dana, just as another resource similar to what
Maria was talking about, the independent center is putting together
on what we're calling an interpreter strike team. Certified
interpreters who are able to travel around the state who have taken
FEMA1-700 and 800 and are familiar with the emergency response
environment. One of the hurdles is trying to get RID to give them
CEUs. Once we've established that, we have about seven or eight
interested interpreters and I'm traveling to California this week
to find out -- they're already implementing this. They've been
doing it for about four or five years now. I'm going there to find
out what they're doing, how they're doing it, who's funding it, all
of those kinds of things. Whatever I can learn about the program
that's already in place. We're hoping to have something on the
ground within the next year as an ASL option.
>> Henry: Thank you. Definitely a need and you know, once that
group is sort of on the same notification and response level, like
the medical reserve corps are, that would be great.
>> A big piece of it, this is Dana, a big piece of it is looping
them into the resource banks and other lists that are out there so
ASL is included when they go through the list of interpreting
agencies. So we do eventually want to loop into to make sure that
they're included so that if people call they have that resource
immediately. We're not sure if that call would come into the
independent center or we may do it through CCDHH. We're not sure
yet who they would call. We're kind of building the structure around
it. But we're hoping to at least establish that team and start this
relationship.
>> Henry. . Yeah.
So another thing that we are looking to in these assessments,
another addition to this tool, would be a visual assessment tool for
anyone who, if we are not able to communicate with them verbally and
there are no visual impairments, actual picture boards and what not.
Great resources and we're going to continue to make sure that we have
that tool ready that coincides with our access and functional needs.
So if anyone else has any of those kind of visual resources, send
them our way as well.
>> Amy: Low tech and high tech. Having both versions of just
the ones that you can hold out in front of you, like a laminated board
are great. But there are also apps out there for sure that facilitate
picture board transitions as well.
>> Jamie: It's Jamie. I guess I have a question, it's a
learning moment for me. I was thinking about medical issues and
thinking about my population issue, thinking about intoxication. Is
there any criteria in shelters about intoxication and how do you
respond?
>> Henry: Like rules against?
>> Jamie. Yeah, and getting into a shelter and how to deal with.
>> Henry: We haven't had those issues and we do consider that
to be kind of a health issue as well. As far as intoxication in
shelters, I'm not sure if there's a set rule. I would think there
would be. But that's not an issue that we've really run into.
>> Certainly not allowed to have alcohol in the shelter. And
it's definitely part of the shelter training, the managers how to
have those conversations, those are one-on-one conversations about
the behavior more so than about the intoxication. You don't have
to sleep in a parking lot, but keep it out. I would double-check
that again with your red cross contact to make sure what the current
training that being given. It's something that's used as an example
in exercises. We always have somebody sneaking in a bottle as part
of the exercise to see how does the shelter manager have that
conversation.
>> I just wanted to mention another resource for you guys. The
independent center also has a braille translating machine that they
would be willing to use if you needed it to translate any of your
written materials.
>> You have to have somebody to read the braille to make sure
it's translated correctly. Because it's not 100%.
>> We can do it on a limited basis, but in a crunch if we really
needed to, we have the machine and the individuals who can do that.
And we also are big on making sure that forms like this are in a
14-point font or larger for people with low vision.
>> This is Amy. This is a project that we've been looking at
in our office. This is a very clear example of why it is so important
for emergency partners to know what their critical messages are going
to be during a disaster and pre-translate, pre multiformat all of
their resources that need to be accessible by everybody in our
population. And so if there is anybody in this room or if anybody
knows of anyone, just a process by which people could walk through
identifying their critical messages, better understanding who lives
in their community, and where to better understand that a non-English
language, whether it's a different kind of format that is needed for
that particular resource to be available in, that this is our
preparedness is just so huge. Because there is not time once the
disaster hits the fan to get that done, usually. There's a minimal
amount that can be done in a crunch, but most of it has to be done
ahead of time.
>> This is Julia. So we have handouts on alternate formats and
what to do, you said 14 the preferred is 18. You've got to have lots
of paper on hand if you're going to print stuff out. And the picture
boards are the universal language and we have electronic picture
boards that we can certainly share with you.
>> Assistive technology partners at the university of Colorado,
if you haven't made friends with them --
>> I just have one last question. I was curious about the
role -- to the floods, there was lots and lots of coverage. I felt
there was a really missed opportunity in the Spanish media outlets
to facilitate that media kind of communication. So again,
questions, maybe suggestion how to network and work with not only
your mainstream media channels but your Spanish language or perhaps
if there's a similar equivalent within the Asian population. I know
as a population we tend to go to our sources. Radio or television
or another network of communicating back to that population.
Because a lot of people during an event have their devices and what
not.
>> I use Facebook during the flood.
>> Exactly. Social media.
>> That's how I got my information.
>> Which is why it's critical to know the communication loops
that already exist day to day. And sometimes that's not media.
That's community organizations that already have the relationship
with our community members, and bringing them to the table early on
to better understand like do you have a 24-hour person that I could
call if I need to get a message out to this community lickty split
during a disaster. And the other thing is, especially with social
media out there is knowing those informal leaders as well. As you
were saying, Jamie, the fact that the people in the homeless community
get tight-knit quick. Is there a means by which worth of mouth or
the folks that are called thought leaders in social media can be
recognized in your own community, especially as it reaches groups
that don't use mainstream media as much.
>> Amy: This is Amy and I hate to cut a tremendous conversation
off short. I'm just recognizing that we have about 12 minutes and
I want to honor everybody's time. Thank you Henry, so much. I'm
sure there will be many, many people reaching out to you with larger
conversations about how do we structure some of these ways to
recognize the needs in the community so that it's easier to see this
represented across the state.
I wanted to spend the last 10 minutes basically asking a question
of this group about how we make the most of this upcoming year.
Especially embedded as I am, as Michael is, as some of us are on both
a state planning level, with some events that are coming up, just
so deeply want to make use of the expertise in the room to do our
best to make, especially the public health full-scale exercise that's
coming up, as inclusive as possible. And so I just wanted to
highlight a couple of things that are coming down the pike, in terms
of our knowledge of how that exercise is going to shake out. And
Michael stop me if I say something wrong.
So between September, the middle of September and the beginning
of October, our local public health partners and their health care
coalition partners will be letting us know which of them will have
a public-facing component, or more specifically, which of them will
have a point of dispensing component of their full-scale exercise.
When we say full-scale exercise, very easy, I think as folks who don't
always do exercises to think okay, we're going to do, you know, a
disaster from beginning to end full-out, just without the actual
disaster impinging on us. But full-scale, usually means full-scale
of particular components, rather than the whole, whole thing. Just
because usually we can't set aside daily operations for long enough
to do a full-length disaster event in simulation. We have local
partners who will need to do a point of dispensing component, which
is that the point at which the medicine that is rapidly disseminated
during a public health event reaches the local level and then is
either divided out through organizations, we heard this language
earlier, closed pods, closed points of dispensing, that are able to
give it to people that are their staff, that are their staff's
families, that are their clients. Or there are called what are
called open pods which face the public. And that's how we get the
majority of just Colorado families in to distribute that medicine.
That is one of the big points of this exercise is to practice that
distribution from a high federal state level down to that regional
local level, but we don't know yet how many of them will have a
public-facing component. We want to definitely look at those groups
who are doing public-facing components and invite them to have a lot
of community inclusion and consideration. And one of the things that
we have in place already is that local public health partners are
asked to invite two non-traditional community partners to come and
observe the exercise so that there's a little bit of community
education that happens about, this is what an exercise looks like.
This is what happens during a disaster that you should be aware of.
And hopefully that starts a conversation about oh, that's what's
going to happen. You know, this might be a point that's difficult
for folks in my community, unless you have this piece worked into
it as well. So we're hoping that those conversations start that way.
But specifically with the groups who will have a public interface
as part of their full-scale exercise, we're hoping we can get more
representative members of the public to participate in the exercises.
And so one thing that I would like to have more of a conversation
with you all about is how do we facilitate that? Once we know who
that's going to be, how can we both identify who critical populations
are in that jurisdiction, to really be aware of what those access
and functional needs are, and how do we make sure that, again, we're
not playing a gotcha game. We want it to be an opportunity for us
to understand where our systems have gotten to at this point, as a
baseline, and then make recommendations about where we can go from
here in the next five years, in the next ten years. And hopefully
again through the relationships in this room, connect people with
resources that are already out there.
So that's one question I have for you. And I'm afraid I'm only
going to have an opportunity to frame these questions and maybe we
can continue a conversation before our next meeting in November. But
the other thing -- the other strategy that we have is also, and some
of you have been a part of this in years past, is identifying injects
that we can add to the exercise, that confront emergency partners
with the diversity of our communities. So at one point Maria and
I actually simulated a request or an inject in an exercise that there
were members of the Spanish-speaking media who wanted more
information and they had seen a document in English and were wondering
if we could provide them a Spanish-speaking document. So we worked
out the expedited language translation process that our office could
go through to make sure that that came through.
But on the other hand, some sort of inject that we might get
is that we're seeing more people with mobility difficulty showing
up at hospitals, because for some reason they're not able to go to
the places where we're distributing medication. And so an
alternative form of distribution needs to happen. Those are the
kinds of injects that we can at least suggest to our community, to
our local emergency partners, to just like say what would you do if
you got this information in the middle of an exercise. So this is
my proposal to this group, that we spend the November meeting
basically half and half on that. In November, talking about which
communities have identify that they have a public-facing component,
and figuring out how we can identify who would be really great to
go through those pods so that we have an experience of community
members giving us feedback about how is it -- how are they doing and
how they could be better and on the second half, brainstorm
collectively, in this kind of public health emergency, what
situations would you want, if possible, the system to practice to
better understand what's in place to meet the needs of the community.
>> The second half of that, coming up as the injects that we
would all like to see.
>> Maria, and one other person I can't remember right now, helped
us do that during our table talk -- cable talk exercise planning and
it was tremendous. I think we had a lot of people, especially in
the public information side of the house, really stand up and go,
oh, you know what? I'm embedded in the public health system, I might
have one of those translation services, I just never thought about
how I can bring them into an exercise to play with us. Does that
sound like a plan for November, is that all right since we ran out
of time today?
>> This is Dana. I just wanted to let you know that the county
health -- what I discussed with them was rotating a consumer with
a different type of disability at every planning meeting so they could
have some kind of input and influence on what the planning looks like.
So I'm assuming --
>> Makes my heart happy.
>> It's something we just talked about this morning. I don't
know this probably hasn't been passed along to you that I'm working
with Dan and Janel to do exactly that.
>> Glad to hear it.
>> So hopefully we could bring in, as we have more conversations
between now and November, I can bring you guys some of the things
we're talking about doing to kind of get the wheels turning on what
else we could do.
>> Fantastic. We would love to learn from you as you build that
relationship.
I'm hoping that many others of you get tapped. I know some of
you are already in there. It is 3:00 now. Thank you so much for
your time. Cheryl, what can we do?
>> Just as a last-minute note, Cheryl and I are both on the FEMA
conference speaker committee and we are looking for people who are
interested in speaking to access and functional needs at the FEMA
conference this year in the spring. That would be in February, I'm
sorry. This year it's in Colorado Springs again just like it was
last year. So if there's anybody who really wants to come down and
speak to your programs and some of the inclusionary efforts that
aren't necessarily being talked about, we would love to hear from
you to get more information about what maybe topics you would be
interested in presenting and how we can get you a platform in front
of all our emergency managers across the state.
Our central reason AFN group is having a free emergency
preparedness training for folks with disabilities. FEMA has sent
out in the preparedness round-up some information about that. And
Cheryl has the flyers so if anybody else wants them, she said she'll
send them to Amy and Amy can get them out to you guys.
>> Amy: You sent them to me yesterday and I'll make sure it
goes out. It's on September 8th and we do need folks to register
because there is a limited amount of space. There are three
different opportunities coming up? Great. So I know the next one,
there's one in longmont happening on September 8th, but there will
be other dates coming up and we'll definitely keep everybody in the
loop.
Thank you all so much for your time.
[ Applause ]