An Active Planning Meeting

Carrie [whispering]: “Hey, Terrye. Glad you could stop for part of our Community Stakeholder Meeting. You missed my intro, the Action Team’s intro and the meeting scope. Then we heard a summary of the local emergency plan. We identified strengths and gaps before you came. Now we’re talking about them. EM is leading this part of the meeting.

Character 9: Hmm…about that emergency plan summary we just heard. The scope seems narrow.  It only takes residents into account. What about people who work or shop here? What about visitors to Disasterville Amusement Park?” 

Character 11: “You know, people with disabilities aren’t just residents either. They might be working here, shopping at the mall, at the amusement park or visiting the library. Kids with disabilities from outside the county go to Disasterville’s public schools’ inclusive after school programs.” 

EM: “Got it. The plan needs to accommodate people besides residents. The plan needs to assume that there will be people with and without disabilities in any place, at any time, who might be impacted when disaster strikes.” 

Character 15: “Here’s what I want to know. How do we get a better feel for disability community needs?  Do we even know how many people with disabilities live here?“ 

Character 13a: “I’m with the local COA [Council on Aging]. We keep a list of program participants. And the public housing agency has a list of residents in accessible units. There may be a way to remove names and other private info from these lists and share the aggregate data. That would be helpful for planning purposes.” 

Character 8: “I’m a researcher from Disasterville U. You know, the U.S. Census (American Community Survey) has data on the functional needs of people with disabilities in counties with over 20,000 residents. You can get it online for free. One of my students could get you the data for Disasterville.” 

Carrie: “Great! We can use multiple data sources in addition to connecting with disability provider agencies to learn about their constituents. This all paints a sharper picture of local needs.” 

Character 21: “These checklists are intense. Are we REALLY going to have to buy expensive equipment like Hoyer lifts? What about the budget?” 

Character 12: “I’m the special ed administrator at Disasterville High. Why can’t you just borrow our Hoyer lift during an emergency? School’s likely to be closed anyway. We could bring it to you.” 

Character 7: “It’s not about buying all this stuff in advance. It’s about knowing how to get resources fast by borrowing, barter or purchase if needed. It’s about sharing community resources like expertise, materials, or equipment.” 

Character 12: “As long as we’re talking resources, why can’t we ask the library to borrow the CCTV low vision magnifier so people with low vision could use it to read or complete registration forms?” 

Character 10: “Well that’s great for the magnifier. But where are we gonna get extra wheelchairs? We always seem to need them during disasters.” 

Character 13a: “The COA [Council on Aging] has a closet full. We’ll share.” 

Character 19: “I’m from Disasterville General Hospital. You mentioned needing non-English and sign language interpreters. We can share with the County during an emergency. Let’s develop an MOU [Memorandum of Understanding].” 

Character 6: “Do we have contact with the local businesses? Remember last winter when we had that terrible ice storm and everyone lost power? You know Disasterville Fish & Chips on Lowell St. that everyone loves? Freddy, the owner, was gonna lose his inventory so he brought it all down to the shelter and we had the biggest, best fish fry ever.” 

Character 7: I’m on the Disasterville Business Council.  At our next meeting we can discuss how the business community could partner with the County to address disasters and emergencies.” 

Character 16: “I’m a community member. Can I be in a drill?” 

Carrie: “Sure you can. I was at a hospital HazMat decontamination drill where community members with and without disabilities played ‘volunteer disaster victims.’ A ‘volunteer victim’ with an intellectual

disability had trouble understanding the instructions. By having a real person to practice with, the responders and hospital staff realized that they needed to give directions in multiple ways. You don’t get real reactions from the inflatable dummies we usually use in Disasterville.” 

PJ: “Great idea! Having volunteer victims would give responders a better idea of who’s in the community, what their needs are, increase disability awareness, and it might even highlight gaps in the local plan.”         

EM:  I’d like to thank you all for the great discussion so far. While our recorder tallies our check marks and blank spaces using Tool 2, I’ll recap. We found a number of areas for improvement: broadening the plan scope; understanding disability community needs; procuring resources, drills and COVID. We thought of some quick fixes and fairly easy next steps to handle these issues.” 

PJ: “Communication emerged as a big issue we need to address. There were lots of blank spaces in the checklist. We talked about needing to increase communication between Disasterville emergency management, public health planners and the disability community, about a need for better public education for the disability community; better, more actionable emergency instructions; and a lack of American Sign Language and other non-English language interpreters. After discussion and a vote, Mina recorded our Action Plan. Mina, would you please project part of Item 1 onto the screen?”  

Disasterville Action Plan

Priority	Brief description of the gap	Proposed strategy to close the gap	Responsible person & contact info	Start/end dates
1	Communication gaps: Enhance communication with disability community: (a) public education/preparedness (b) emergency instructions (c) lack of sign language and other non-English language interpreters	(a) Enhance communication between Disasterville planners and disability provider organizations; distribute public education materials through organizations; hold preparedness training at organizations; co-develop inclusive preparedness events (b)Develop emergency instructions in multiple and accessible modalities; make Disasterville County website accessible and use, along with social media to make outreach to disability community; have people with disabilities review content and form of instructions developed in advance (c) Work with disability community and health organizations, local houses or worship to develop lists of emergency interpreters	PJ Smith, Public Health Preparedness Planner (555)-555-5555 pjplanner@Disasterville.co.state.us (a) Disasterville Independent Living Center; Disasterville Disability commission (b) Disasterville disability commission community member with technology expertise; Disasterville Cable TV station; State commissions for the Deaf and the Blind (c)Disasterville County Hospital; Disasterville Baptist Church; Disasterville Latin American Health Center	4/15/15-11/30/15

EM: “The rest of the Action Plan is now complete. Before we close, I want to thank my colleagues from Disasterville County government. I want to thank the Prepared4ALL Action Team and other residents for their hard work today. We’ll send out the notes from this meeting. Then we’ll send you a remind of your action items and timelines. We’ll also keep tabs on progress and report back to you.

PJ: “EM, you forgot something. We have to add a COVID-19 Annex to the Emergency Dispensing Site (EDS) Plan. I’d like to ask the Action Team and others a big question. What are some access and functional needs issues we should be thinking about?

Character 16: “I want to know EVERYTHING that will happen when I get the shot.”

PJ [Thought cloud]: That reminds me that we need plain language public information and easy to read and understand signage at the EDS stations. We also need ASL interpreters and non-English language interpreters.”

Carrie [Thought cloud]: I’ll remind PJ about registration and consent formats in accessible formats. Maybe they need the forms on computers so that people who use screen reader software and read them. Oh, and the aisles need to be wide enough to accommodate people with mobility equipment and service animals.

Character 11: “I’m concerned about social distancing and masking at the EDS. People my age are particularly vulnerable.”

PJ [Thought cloud]: I’ll work with the public health nurses and partners from the Disasterville Community Health Center to set up those protocols.

Character 9: “Like the young lady, I want to know each step of what’s going to happen. What about a flow chart or diagram with all of the steps in the process? And what if the noise, lights and people drive me crazy? Is there going to be a quiet area so people who need to can decompress?”

EM [Thought cloud]: We have someone in the office who knows how to make infographics. I’ll let PJ know. And we need a big enough space so there can be quiet areas. Hmm…maybe we should hold a drive-thru EDS. Or, maybe we should have an indoor and outdoor EDS. PJ must be thinking about this because they’ve got to move all those people through pretty quickly.

PJ [Thought cloud]: Man…I think we’re going to need an indoor and outdoor EDS. Hmm…I better check on personnel to give the vaccines. We may have to see if Medical Reserve Corps medical professionals and school nurses are available to help.

Character 13a: “What about vaccine hesitancy?”

Carrie: “You raise an important issue. Some people are very concerned about the vaccine. People ask: ‘Is it safe?’ ‘Can I trust government?’ ‘What aren’t they telling us?’…. We’re going to talk about this in detail at the next meeting. I’d like to see if some experts on vaccine hesitancy can join our meeting….

PJ: “This is so helpful. Thank you. There’s is so much to talk about with COVID that we should hold a separate COVID-19 public meeting. As you all know, the vaccines will be coming soon. We’re providing the vaccines in phases. While we use our yearly flu clinics as practice for an EDS, this year we can use the Phase 1 vaccine group, health care responders, as a drill as well. I’d like to talk about that at the COVID-19 meeting.

“And now, this meeting can finally be adjourned. Good night everyone. Thank you all.