Abstract
Hurricane Katrina created the largest population of internally displaced persons in the history of the United States. Exceptions to Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) usual eligibility requirements allowed states from across the nation to apply for Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program (CCP) grants to provide services to evacuees. Over a 16-month period, crisis counselors documented 1.2 million individual and group encounters across 19 CCPs. Most encounters (936,000, 80%) occurred in Presidential disaster-declared areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, but many (237,000, 20%) occurred in 16 smaller “undeclared” programs across the country. Programs showed excellent reach relative to external benchmarks provided by FEMA registrations for individual assistance and population characteristics. Programs varied widely in service mix and intensity. The declared programs reached more people, but the undeclared programs provided more intensive services to fewer people with higher needs.
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Notes
Another potential benchmark is how programs performed relative to their budgets. The three declared programs, which provided 80% of the services over this interval, accounted for 68% of the total budget. The four undeclared programs that provided 80% of the encounters outside of the areas of disaster declarations accounted for 77% of the undeclared program budget.
Not surprisingly, grant size (dollars awarded) was highly correlated with FEMA registrations, r s = 0.85, P < 0.001, and with the number of counseling encounters, r s = 0.75, P < 0.001.
Grant size showed neither a linear nor quadratic relationship with the percent of all encounters accounted for by individual counseling, Fs < 1. Thus, overall, financial inputs appeared to have little to do with programs’ service mix or balance.
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Acknowledgments
This project was supported by an interagency agreement (#AM06C5600A) between the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (NCPTSD), Executive Division, White River Junction, VT; and by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START, grant number N00140510629), a Center of Excellence in the Social and Behavioral Sciences funded by the Department of Homeland Security. The contents of this article are solely the opinions, findings, and conclusions of the authors. It does not necessarily represent the official views of views of SAMHSA, CMHS, the VA, DHS or FEMA. Dr. Bellamy completed this article in her private capacity.
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Norris, F.H., Bellamy, N.D. Evaluation of a National Effort to Reach Hurricane Katrina Survivors and Evacuees: The Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program. Adm Policy Ment Health 36, 165–175 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-009-0217-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-009-0217-z