Outlines of a past FEMA Course:
Understanding Transformational Resiliency: The Impacts and Realities of FEMA Deployments and Operations
The goal of this 7 Unit series is to provide current information, updated resources and practical resiliency tools for the FEMA employee. This critical program is designed to help individuals and teams do their jobs better through a growing understanding of investing in their mental, emotional, and professional resiliency.
No matter how new or how experienced you are, each disaster experience is unique and different. It is of career value to invest in supporting FEMA employees through an increasing knowledge of the Impacts in our deployments or operations, providing an expanding menu of resources to manage those impacts, and continuing to work towards FEMA becoming a ‘resiliency aware’ agency.
The two primary goals of this series on transformational resiliency are to 1) help the FEMA employee, whatever your role, by increasing the quality of your personal and FEMA work lives; and 2) to provide resources and supports when there are more difficult, or even traumatic exposures in your disaster work.
Each unit is 90 minutes and includes current research, stories from the field, best practices, interviews from emergency managers, and breakout sessions for participants to share their own experiences and lessons learned.
Key subjects Include:
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Understanding the realities, impacts, and challenges of FEMA/ Emergency Management (EM) work through the different phases of deployment.
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Discuss the growing definitions and awareness of stress and trauma impacts; how we are individually affected; and building our ‘personal resiliency portfolio’.
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Explore how we as individuals can grow, and increase our resiliency, even through stress and trauma; including the topics of Post Traumatic Growth and becoming a ‘Trauma Informed’ agency.
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Expanding our resiliency field toolkit for individuals and groups with practical resources such as organized ‘daily check ins’, group/team helps, Post Deployment Interviews and strengthening our active peer to peer connections.
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Supporting and caring for your ‘Home Network’ through the phases of deployment, and implementing best practices for transitioning home
In the past few years, with the increasing number of disasters across the county, including COVID, we have heard FEMA and other EM professionals talk about the very real impacts and continuing needs they have to manage the stress of their work, care for themselves, and continue to provide services to those in need.
This series seeks to increase awareness of these needs, to increase understanding and freedom to discuss these subjects within FEMA, implement additional field resources and best practices to support staff, and work towards an on-going cultural shift with emotional resiliency becoming a key standing component of FEMA’s mission.
Questions or comments? Please reach us under our Contact page on this website if you or your organization are interested.