Disaster training to benefit Catholic Charities response

By RENEE WEBB
Content and Design Coordinator

When several communities within the Diocese of Sioux City were impacted by record flooding last summer, Catholic Charities was one of the resources available to help.

“After the floods, Catholic Charities did a lot of work with survivors,” said Nate Phillips, a therapist with Catholic Charities in Sioux City. “We set up booths, did a lot of debriefings, provided direct assistance when available. It made me proud of the work we did.”

Participating in the efforts of Catholic Charities last summer and previously living on the gulf coast of Mississippi as it was hit by Hurricane Katrina motivated Phillips to attend this year’s Applied Institute for Disaster Excellence (AIDE) offered recently in Tulsa by Catholic Charities, USA.

By attending the AIDE training, he felt Catholic Charities in the diocese could expand upon the work they did in the past and enhance their ability to respond to other natural disasters.

Phillips was among more than 200 individuals from Catholic Charities agencies throughout the country, nonprofits and government partners to take part in the training to help the Catholic Charities network be better prepared to respond in the aftermath of disasters.

“It was almost solely focused on building capabilities within individual Catholic Charities or other agencies,” he said.

While Phillips was the only staffer from Catholic Charities in the diocese to attend, he noted he was able to connect with others from the regional cohort made up of states in the Midwest.

“From that cohort, the goal long-term is build the capabilities and identify the resources within the individual dioceses to be able to respond to disasters,” said Phillips, who noted this includes agencies from neighboring dioceses helping assist heavily impacted areas.

Throughout the week-long training, he noted there were many opportunities to network and make new connections with others.

Nate Phillips at natural disaster training.

He pointed out that in talking to others, it became very apparent that not all Catholic Charities agencies are set up in the same way as the one in Sioux City with a strong focus on counseling.“One bishop made the comment, ‘If you’ve seen one Catholic Charities, you’ve seen one Catholic Charities,’” said Phillips. “Every Catholic Charities is different.”

Some of the agencies offer counseling as a mix of their services, others do not offer counseling at all. He mentioned some have stopped offering mental health services because it is so difficult to find providers. Many agencies do focus on disaster relief efforts.

At AIDE, attendees had the option to go through training and become certified as a disaster case manager, which Phillips decided to do because he felt it would provide him with the most tools to assist disaster survivors.

“A disaster case manager would typically work with an individual or family as soon as they were identified after a disaster and carry them through even long-term to help work them through the system,” he described. The case manager would not only help the individual or family work with FEMA but get them in touch with other resources they may not be aware of.

Should another natural disaster strike in the Diocese of Sioux City like last summer’s

Nate Phillips and other Catholic Charities representatives at a resource booth setup last summer after flooding in the diocese.

flooding, the Catholic Charities therapist mentioned he has more knowledge and skills to assist not only survivors but coworkers.By attending AIDE, Phillips walked away from the training with an awareness of various state agencies they can collaborate with during times of natural disasters and learned about best practices for case managers.

“The amount of institutional knowledge that was available in Tulsa was crazy,” said Phillips, who noted there were able to learn from many experts in this field.

His work and personal experiences have nurtured his desire to help others – especially at times of disaster.

He appreciates the fact that if Catholic Charities knows a therapist has a passion for something, they help them build upon it. While at the training, he was affirmed in his work and the work of Catholic Charities as a whole.

As he attended AIDE, what stood out to Phillips was that it was common for him “to talk to somebody who had worked at their Catholic Charities for 10, 20, 30-plus years. That mission-driven work has kept people at Catholic Charities and doing incredibly challenging work – working with disaster survivors on the worst day of their lives – to see how these people were still on-fire was awesome.”

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