• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Results

Hurricane Katrina Assistance Project

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

When the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) called upon Westover Consultants, Inc. (WCI) in September 2005 to assist with coordinating the Federal emergency response to Hurricane Katrina, no one knew the extent of the storm’s devastation. Today, we know that at least 1,600 people died and more than a half million were displaced—many forever. Beneath the visible physical devastation, however, remains widespread emotional loss and dislocation, especially for children, the elderly and infirm, and those with psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. It was this threat to the psychological well-being of storm victims that galvanized WCI to join forces with SAMHSA to help implement the Katrina Assistance Project (KAP). The project aimed to recruit and deploy seasoned mental health professionals to provide counseling services to hurricane survivors located in areas throughout the Gulf Region who were in desperate need of help.

Within 2 weeks of the Government’s call, WCI recruited and screened hundreds of skilled mental health professionals and deployed them to the Gulf Region. By project’s end 10 months later, 2,098 applicants from every State and Puerto Rico had been processed, and of these, 600 expert consultants had been deployed to a variety of locations throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, representing the following professions:

Professionals typically served 2-week deployments in a host community setting, such as a clinic, hospital, crisis counseling center, school, or Government-chartered cruise ship. Most of these sites were located in Louisiana, although a few were scattered among the storm-affected areas of Mississippi and Alabama. (Because many counselors asked for additional assignments, WCI coordinated 1,245 deployments overall.)

Thanks to WCI’s logistical and technical support, SAMHSA’s deployed professionals were able to serve almost 80,000 individuals at all sites between January 2006 and June 2006, long after the initial emergency response. Twenty-seven percent of the service recipients were elderly, and about one third were children.  In Louisiana alone, almost 28,000 survivors participated in individual and/or group sessions; approximately two-thirds of these were consultations/contacts, while the remainder represented referrals to other mental health, substance abuse, or community providers. On the New Orleans cruise ships that housed the first responders, more than 25,000 displaced workers and their families received mental health services through the KAP between September 2005 and April 2006. As the project evolved, substance abuse services became increasingly important, and KAP deployees ultimately assisted 50,000 persons in need of such counseling services, mostly through community- and school-based efforts.

No single entity—Federal or State government, national professional association, community-based organization, or private contractor—could have achieved these results by itself under the desperate circumstances of Katrina’s aftermath. Bringing counselor and survivors together represented an almost impossible task during the catastrophe’s early weeks. Nevertheless, WCI’s team-building approach marshaled enough public and private resources to make it happen, and kept the healing exchange going to benefit tens of thousands.

Hundreds of child, youth, and adult evacuees of Hurricane Katrina of diverse cultural backgrounds who were located in shelters, hospitals, churches, and other community settings. Primary geographic areas served within Louisiana were Lake Charles, Houma, New Orleans, Mandeville, Pineville, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport.

To identify, screen, and deploy multiple, simultaneous multidisciplinary teams of licensed mental health professionals on very short notice in a fast-changing environment to meet the mental health and substance abuse service needs of persons impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

This effort was conducted in partnership with several national professional membership organizations that identified licensed mental health and substance abuse professionals who met project criteria for possible deployment.

Coordinating closely with SAMHSA, WCI organized and managed all necessary systems, processes, and procedures to deploy multidisciplinary Katrina Assistance Teams (KATs) to help the hurricane evacuees. The KATs comprised licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers; substance abuse and pastoral counselors; and nurses and other mental health professionals with expertise across multiple disciplines. Many of these culturally sensitive professionals were multilingual and had expertise with diverse populations-including children and the elderly. Some team members were also proficient in American Sign Language (ASL).

Once on the ground in Louisiana, the SAMHSA KATs provided crisis and supportive counseling services to mental health clinics and other service delivery locations. Local requests for assistance were communicated to SAMHSA through the State Behavioral Health Care Director in the Office of Mental Health and/or through staff of the Capital Area Human Services District. Such requests called for expanding service delivery capacity to meet the mental health and substance use treatment needs of persons displaced or otherwise affected by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Upon returning from Louisiana, WCI staff conducted telephone debriefings with KAT members in order to convey the results of their experiences to SAMHSA.