Page 146 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Working as an Ally to Underserved Communities 115

end of the meeting, representatives from Safe Horizon decided this could
be a viable tool to address unmet needs for clients they were assisting
who were “outside the box” for regular resources but still eligible for ser-
vices because they had some link to 9/11 below Canal Street. This raised
some concern among faith-based donors that the cases coming from
these agencies would already have access to resources, but a decision was
favored to allow the case managers from the United Services Group agen-
cies to have access to the 9/11 Roundtable for case presentations. By June
2002, a breakthrough happened when the chair of the newly forming 9/11
Roundtable was invited to present information about the Roundtable to
the USG case management coordination meeting. After the presenta-
tion, the 9/11 Roundtable chair from Lutheran Social Services and the
partnering agency presenter from FEMA were invited to attend all case
management coordination meetings at the USG. Soon after, social work
supervisors from the USG facilitated NYC 9/11 Unmet Needs Roundtable
in-services for all of their caseworkers. Within 2 months, 140 casework-
ers had been trained by the Lutheran Disaster Response–funded staff
person, and the NYC 9/11 Unmet Needs Roundtable was evolving into a
steady resource for all 9/11 impacted people, regardless of their physical
proximity to the disaster.

An “out-of-the-box” case was presented on behalf of the family of a 10-year-
old child. On September 11, 2001, both of the child’s parents were in the area
of the World Trade Center. Both parents survived, but in the hours that passed
waiting to hear from his parents, the child believed they were dead. This led
the child to psychological distress and the child attempted suicide by jumping
from a balcony. Until September 11, 2001, this family did not realize that their
child might have early psychiatric problems, but even with knowledge of his
parent’s safety, he continued to exhibit signs of mental illness. The family was
now suffering under the cost of medical bills for their child’s treatment. Until
September 11, this family had consider themselves middle class, but with the
rising costs, they realized that they had been living paycheck to paycheck and
could not survive with all of the medical bills. With the help of a good case
manager, the family came up with a recovery plan, but they needed assistance
with the mounting debt that they had taken on in the months after 9/11. The
family’s entire story was substantiated with documentation from hospitals,
doctors, and other bills. This family was able to get closer to completing their
long-term recovery with the help of the 9/11 Roundtable, and they were not
eligible for other assistance because they did not fall into one of the common
9/11 impacted categories.