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From January 2002 NASW NEWS Social Work in the Public Eye
An article in the Honolulu Advertiser included entries from a journal Lee kept about his experience serving water and food and offering support to workers at "Ground Zero," the disaster site. "Just outside [of Ground Zero] the Red Cross set up one of their two kitchens to feed this army of dedicated but exhausted workers. The pain, fatigue and blank stares reflected in the faces of the workers I encountered said it all," Lee wrote. Lee said social workers, of all mental health professionals, are the "ideal candidates" for disaster mental health work because they already know how to link and empower people. "People who can't switch to a disaster mental health model do more harm than good, because they slap labels on people and make them feel like something is wrong with them," he said. "Social workers come to this work with a whole different slant." Lee said much of what a disaster mental health professional does is intervention: crisis intervention, defusing and debriefing. Crisis intervention, he said, entails a volunteer providing food and water to rescue workers or family members or whoever needs it, using this simple but necessary transaction as a bridge to provide that person with encouragement and validation. "A lot of the volunteer's time is spent listening to the stories of rescue workers," Lee said, adding that with each telling, the re-experiencing of the story will become a little less traumatic. Lee said the process of defusing is focused on allowing people to ventilate and solve problems, thus taking the fuse out of a potentially explosive situation. And he said debriefing is often done just before the volunteers go home, a service provided for the volunteers themselves, as well as families of victims and rescuers. "The Red Cross feels it's equally important to help the helpers," Lee said.
The Washington Post reported that Sherraden "said the government's top priority should be to fund asset-building mechanisms such as 401(k)s and IRA accounts for low-income workers. He said such a system of individual accounts should be in addition to Social Security benefits." Sherraden was quoted as saying that "asset-based policies have the potential to exacerbate inequality and, indeed, are doing so because the poor are being left behind." Sherraden's recommendations included: that the poor should be brought into 401(k)s, IRAs, State College Savings Plans and all of the other tax-advantaged asset-building strategies that now benefit the nonpoor but not the poor, adding that because they do not receive tax benefits, the poor should receive direct deposits into asset accounts; that if a new policy system of individual accounts is created, it should be above and beyond the current contribution and benefit structure of Social Security; and that if there are to be individual asset accounts carved out of Social Security, these accounts should be progressively funded, including an initial deposit into the accounts of low-paid workers and government matching funds beginning with the first dollar deposited. In giving his testimony to the commission, Sherraden raised concerns that "the pronounced shift toward asset-based domestic policy in the United States has excluded the poor." His overall concern, he said, is whether the poor are included in these policies, and whether they have sufficient asset accumulation in their accounts for their "social protection and household development." "There is considerable interest from the commission in these recommendations," Sherraden said, "but it's an uphill struggle. Still, if we don't argue for these accounts to be progressive, the poor will be left out." Sherraden said that traditionally the U.S.'s policies have supported such help for the poor as income supplements and food stamps, "which are important, but the way households develop — especially for the next generation — is, they make some investments, they have some assets." Back to NASW NEWS Contents
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