2 Day Training Course: California: Integrating Access and Functional Needs into Emergency Planning, Response and Recovery

NEW COURSE!

Integrating Access and Functional Needs into Emergency Planning, Response and Recovery

Dates and California locations:

Sept 7-8 San Diego

Nov 16-17 Oakland 

Dec 15-16 Los Angeles

Course Length: 2 days

Description: 2 day/16 hour course. This course is California’s purposed update to the G-197 course “Emergency Planning for Functional Needs Populations”.

Day 1 focuses on developing plans that integrate people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs into response and recovery by specifically addressing communication, sheltering, evacuation and transportation concerns.

Day 2 offers insights into lessons from past disaster events, in depth guidance on integrated evacuation planning, and strategies to more effectively utilize transportation resources during emergency events.

Target Audiences: 

·         Emergency managers and planners

·         First responders including law enforcement, fire protection and emergency medical services

·         Resource agencies including transportation, communications, public works, and public health

·         Government organizations and non-government organizations (NGOs) who have, as primary part of their mission, emergency planning, response, and/or recovery

·         Planners and managers of mass transit, paratransit, rural transit, and NGO and private transit operators (taxi, shuttle services, non emergency medical, etc.)

·         Evacuation planners, transportation planners and civic planners

 

This course is for you if you:

·         Are overwhelmed about how to integrate access and functional needs into emergency planning, response and recovery

·         Are concerned about your level of preparedness for emergency evacuations

·         Are unclear regarding how to avoid costly mistakes

·         Need ideas to determine how and where to start

·         Wonder who is going do this and how will you pay for it

·         Question how important this effort really is

 

The Integrating Functional Needs course is an elective course for individuals seeking to complete the California Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Management Specialist Certificate Program.

 

Tuition FREE: This course is funded by the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG), Federal Transit Administration (FTA) section 5304 planning funds and State Public Transportation Funds. EMPG provides tuition-free training for CA State/Local First Responders and CA Emergency Management Agencies. Most non-profit agencies that are affiliated with the California Mutual-Aid Response System are also eligible. Members of private industry are generally required to pay the cost-recovery tuition rate unless documentation that verifies you are sponsored by a CA Emergency Management Agency is provided. Please contact the Course Registrar for information on cost-recovery tuition rates.

Registration: Apply immediately online at http://w3.calema.ca.gov/PrepareTrain/Public/Registrar.nsf/wf?OpenFrameSet, then go to Emergency Management. If you need a hardcopy application, please contact the registrar at (805) 549-3536 and one will be faxed or emailed to you. An information packet and map will be sent 2-4 weeks prior to the course. For registration questions call the Registrar Kayla Mikel at (805) 549-3536, Kayla.Mikel@calema.ca.gov or for course content, contact the Course Manager Michael Brady at (805) 549-3548,Michael.Brady@ calema.ca.gov.

Course Objectives:

This workshop focuses on building emergency management professional competencies and capacities in order to:

·         Assess emergency plans from the perspective of access and functional needs

·         Establish more realistic and effective planning assumptions with regard to people with access and functional needs

·         Update common disability-related planning nomenclature in favor of bias-neutral terminology

·         Demystify the inclusion process regarding access and functional needs populations

·         Maximize capacity of emergency medical and non-medical resources

·         Identify important partners and organizational resources

·         Sharpen tactical planning skills and incorporate the use of written agreements; define essential roles, responsibilities and reimbursement strategies

·         Identify specific action steps, resources and tools that will help you and your team spark creative thinking, generate new ideas, and solve pressing problems.

 

This workshop will help you to better understand:

·         Essential lessons in public information, evacuation, sheltering, and recovery from recent (successful and failed) emergencies

·         Elements that should be integrated to improve planning, response and recovery operations

·         Implications of notice v. no-notice emergency events

·         How to effectively find and use qualified representatives

·         How to make public notification and alert systems available to the broadest population possible

 

This workshop will enable to you better sustain integrated efforts addressing access and functional needs concerns into emergency preparedness, response and recovery by:

·         Identifying and sharing effective as well as low cost and no cost practices

·         Helping to identify and harness the energy of champions/advocates

·         Evaluating effective training and exercise programs

·         Providing qualifications and responsibilities for an access and functional needs advisor

·         Incorporating elements and projects in to funding applications and contracts

 

The thorniest problems often present the greatest opportunities! This course includes:

·         Powerful, results-driven training packed with idea-generators, exercises, scenarios, guidelines, action steps and resources to help you do inclusive planning

·         Interactive exercises designed to drive home the skills you learn

To Register:

1.    Go  to: http://w3.calema.ca.gov/PrepareTrain/Public/Registrar.nsf/wf?OpenFrameSet

2.    Clink on < Emergency Management >

3.    Click on < Integrating Access and Functional Needs into Emergency Planning, Response and Recovery >

4.    Choose date

5.    Download application and complete (if will automatically be sent to CSTI)

6.    Questions: contact the register Kayla Mikel at Kayla.mikel@calema.ca.gov

Instructors:

Gary Gleason is the vice president of Nusura and has worked in public transportation since 1990, and in emergency management since 1998. Awarded a Fulbright scholarship in civil protection in 2008, Gleason is an expert in emergency planning, training and exercises for transit agencies and departments of transportation.

Gleason began his career as the director of marketing and planning for a regional transportation authority in Colorado where he developed award-winning marketing campaigns, led interagency planning initiatives, and helped develop the agency’s first Americans with Disabilities Act compliance plan. He also served as the president of the Colorado Association of Transit Agencies (CASTA). Gleason then went to work as a disaster assistance employee for FEMA, working in public affairs on 20 major disasters including fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Gleason spent a month at Ground Zero with FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces.

Gleason has served as principal in charge on numerous transportation emergency management initiatives in California, authored transit emergency planning guidance for Caltrans and the Federal Transit Administration, and is currently co-principal investigator on a Transportation Research Board project studying the role of para-transit in emergency evacuations. Gleason has provided training and/or technical assistance in Los Angeles, across California, in nearly all the states in the U.S. and several countries abroad. In 2010 Gleason was named an adjunct professor with the US Department of Transportation’s Transportation Safety Institute.

In July 2010, President Obama appointed Richard Devylder as the U.S. Department of Transportation’s first Senior Advisor for Accessible Transportation.  Richard advises the department’s efforts to develop and execute effective policy strategies to ensure all modes of transportation are accessible and integrated to meet the diverse functional needs of the public.

 

Prior to his DOT position, Richard served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of the California Emergency Management Agency from January 2008 thru June 2010, focusing on the access and functional needs of people with disabilities, in disasters.  Richard provided guidance in reviewing and reshaping emergency management systems, policies and practices in communicating, evacuating and sheltering Californian’s with disabilities. 

 

As Deputy Director for the California Department of Rehabilitation from August 2003 thru January 2008, Richard was responsible for the oversight of four departmental divisions.  From 2001-2003, Richard served as Chairman of the State Independent Living Council; and as the Executive Director of the Dayle McIntosh Center from September 2000 thru August 2003.

 

 

June Isaacson Kailes operates a Disability Policy Consulting practice and is the Associate Director, Center for Disability and Health Policy at Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California. In the early 1980s, June became one of just a handful of people with disabilities who focused on disability and aging related emergency issues. She works on emergency issues internationally, with state, local, and federal agencies, with community-based organizations and an array of other emergency managers, planners and contractors. Her breadth and depth of experience in access and functional needs and her work as a writer, trainer, researcher, policy analyst and advocate is widely known and respected. 

 

June is well known for her pioneering work in conceiving, promoting, and moving the emergency management world from the vague “special needs” focus to operationalizing an access and  functional needs approach to planning and response. This also includes conceiving, and working with California and other states to adopt and implement the use of Functional Assessment Service Teams (FAST). These teams strategically link government, nonprofit and business sectors to work with “at risk individuals” through screening, and supporting independence needs which prevents deterioration. FASTs enables people to maintain their independence, mobility, health, safety, and successfully manage in general population shelters and other temporary housing options.

 

June has the unique ability to blend and bridge two worlds: disability user experiences and emergency management experiences. Her contracts include working with several California State Departments as well as cities and counties. She has also worked on the Federal level with the Centers for Disease Control, Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services on policy, planning and training issues. She co-chaired The United States Department of Homeland Security’s working group which developed a Functional and Medical Support Sheltering Target Capabilities List, worked on FEMA's Guidance on Planning for Integration of Functional Needs Support Services in General Population Shelters, and is a member of the FEMA’s National Advisory Council. President Clinton appointed June to the US States Access Board where she served. June publishes extensively on emergency issues related to people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs. http://www.jik.com /disaster.html