ESC in disasters

Course Description:
This advanced level course will enhance your skills to provide effective emotional and spiritual care (ESC) to meet the disaster-related needs of disaster responders and disaster-affected families and individuals within disaster operations. This course builds on the crisis intervention principles taught in the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) core courses to effectively integrate these principles within ESC teams for appropriate care throughout the disaster continuum from the immediate to the long-term recovery process.

This course is designed for trained clergy, chaplains, mental health professionals, and CISM trained crisis responders who desire to enhance their skills in providing Emotional and Spiritual Care to survivors of disaster and trauma.

Suggested but not mandatory prerequisites: Assisting Individuals in Crisis; Group Crisis Intervention; Pastoral Crisis Intervention.

Learning Objectives:

• One’s own faith tradition and ESC
• ESC & the Incident Command System
• ESC & disaster relief operations
• Physical, psychological, emotional impact of disasters
• Behavioral, interpersonal and spiritual impact of disasters
• Range of ESC interventions in the aftermath
• Suitability to provide ESC
• Maintaining health during deployment
• Deployment personal care plans
• Intervention and care giving concepts

General Contact Hours: 

Two-Day Course; 14 Contact Hours: 

** Please check with your state licensing board prior to registration to see if they will accept the Certificate of Completion as a means for continuing education.

Resources:

National VOAD Disaster Spiritual Care Guidelines

A Disaster Worker’s Daily Prayer

DROP-IT (A post-deployment, out-processing model for emergency services personnel and crisis and disaster relief workers)

National VOAD Points of Consensus Disaster Emotional Care

National VOAD Points of Consensus Disaster Emotional Care (Spanish)

National VOAD Points of Consensus Disaster Spiritual Care

National VOAD Points of Consensus Disaster Spiritual Care (Spanish)