SELECTED PORTIONS OF AN INTERVIEW CONDUCTED WITH UMCOR DISASTER CONSULTANT CHRISTY SMITH, RECORDED IN LEBANON, TENN. IN LATE SEPTEMBER, 2010, ON THE SUBJECT OF DISASTER CASE MANAGERS:
My name is Christy Smith and I’m a Disaster Consultant for the United Methodist Committee on Relief.  Consultants with UMCOR teach a variety of classes, including disaster case management.  Its goal is to train volunteers and staff, if they’re paid, to coordinate and advocate with and empower clients to oversee their own recovery from disaster.
Case Management is a holistic kind of work, different from other social services, which is single focus often times. Disaster Case Management seeks to enable clients to recover all parts that are broken after a disaster.  Sometimes the walls and the foundation are the most important.  Sometimes the broken heart is more important, and so their training will help them identify what we need to do our work. It may be concerns outside of the physical structure and more concerned with the spiritual and emotional well-being of the client.
We have people in the room now who have nursing experience, pastoral experience, teaching experience; they’re going to dovetail well, as would those who’ve been in real estate or any kind of human connection.  So they all bring some different skills. 
You know I think people determine from the two days we spend together whether this is for them or not. ‘Cause some folks are the high adrenalin types who really want to be on the front end of disaster response.  They want to muck and gut (Clear damaged flooring, carpet and drywall out of disaster damaged homes). They’re not the same ones who should be Case Managers, or rarely are they the same ones. Sometimes. 
But these are slow.  This is a slower pace.  This is the recovery phase.  Much slower. So, the pace is slower, the skills that are needed are much more around listening than they are around yankin’, rippin’, tearin’, crashin’.  If we’re here, we’re almost always type As.  We’re get things done type people. We know how to get things done. We have to put a little break on that, because it’s not our recovery, it’s theirs. 
So even though I think I may know the best way for you to recover, it’s not my business to instruct you on how you should recover.  My business is to figure out what it is that recovery looks like to you, and how we can accomplish that in some way, or how I can direct you to the right resources to get that done. 
So it’s not about me comin’ in to fix things or figuring out the best way to fix them. Fix it people probably don’t…they probably move into another area. They’re probably in construction, volunteer coordination, not so much Case Management. 
Our hope is and our talk is all about, “You realize, now, how important it would have been, how helpful it would have been, had you had this process in place on May first (when the storms and flooding began). You would have been immediately able to go to work and help those that you’re now trying to figure out a way help.” So everybody seems to get that message and whether they do it well or not our goal would be that you put together a long term recovery that’s going to exist in perpetuity.
And I give them suggestions about ways you can keep it alive, practice what you’ve learned in other ways in the community so that we don’t forget what we’ve learned. The functions don’t change, the people and the faces can. So, ideally, the bones of a long term recovery group stay in place.  If every community in America had one, and a good needs assessment process in their plan, we’d half the work done before we ever got going.  True everywhere. 
The skill that I value the most for Case Managers is advocacy. So I get pretty passionate about what that role is for a Case Manager. Because of course you know that it comes from the Latin, (unknown): to give voice to the voiceless. It’s those who are vulnerable. We’re vulnerable before for all of the reasons that people are vulnerable: Whether it’s age, whether it’s economy, whether it’s occupation, whether it’s disability; those are our primary focus, the folks who are most vulnerable.
Then we lift up ways that they can be less vulnerable the next time; either by skills that we give them, because we’ve learned how to help them empower themselves for the next disaster which is certainly coming whatever it might be, or ways that we can make our community stronger and better. 
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