Environmental and social disasters are uncommon, and their occurrences are widely spaced out. They greatly impact the communities living in the regions where they occur and lead to the loss of lives, livelihoods, and social amenities. The calamities bring out the hierarchy of needs. First, responders initially focus on physiological needs and security needs by providing food, shelter, and medical assistance to the afflicted communities. The first responders are often; medics, firefighters, donors, and other emergency personnel (Powell & Holleran-Steiker, 2017). The processes often postpone or overlook the psycho-social needs of the community. Children are among society’s most vulnerable groups. These disasters are often their first experience with loss, autonomy, and the need to make difficult decisions, all in a very short period.
The children who were previously well cared for often find themselves lost, disoriented, and injured with no one to attend to them. Interventions such as the Journey of Hope intervention in Alabama focused on the improvement of the state of the children who experienced the earthquakes in 2011 (Powell & Holleran-Steiker, 2017). The interventions made include the use of group sessions for counseling. These interventions made use of school settings as a counseling environment. The children were taught psycho-education skills for the learners whereby the learners understood self-expression and used coping mechanisms independent of the social workers in personal situations. The program’s strengths were its focus on the aspect of self-expression techniques, it curbed bullying and helped in coping with grief. The intervention was found to improve the psycho-social state of the learners and promoted mental health for the participants. Issues addressed the need to focus on processing grief, survivor’s guilt, trauma, psycho-social disorientation, and the change in roles in the family.
Reference
Powell, T., & Holleran-Steiker, L. K. (2017). Supporting children after a disaster: a case study of a psycho-social school-based intervention. Clinical Social Work Journal, 45(2), 176-188. Web.