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Dedicated Staff Continues to Support 9/11 Victims and Families
Written by
Lesly Hallman
, Staff Writer, RedCross.org
Wednesday, March 31, 2004 — NEW YORK—At 9 am on September 10, 2001, Allison Upton had a job interview in the World Trade Center. The next morning, she sat stunned as she watched the attacks unfold before her eyes on television. While most people spent the next few days trying to come to terms with the tragedy, Upton thought of little but the woman who interviewed her, searching furiously until she learned she was still working and safe at a makeshift office in New Jersey.
Despite the overwhelming emotions that the American public experienced following 9/11, a dedicated group of mental health professionals had the same reaction as Upton—they chose to put the victims and their families first, by joining the Family Support Services team, a division of the September 11 Recovery Program of the Red Cross.
The day after the World Trade Center collapse, an American Red Cross disaster worker joins rescuers at Ground Zero.
Photographer: Daniel Cima |
The Family Support Services team manages the more than 6,000 cases the Red Cross has handled following 9/11. The team works in small, close knit groups, typically one supervisor for every four or five caseworkers. The optimal caseload size per worker has been 35 to 40 clients. However, this number has varied considerably over the life of the program.
More than two years later, new cases are still coming in, most of whom are rescue workers no longer working at the site, but are now suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, finding months and years later that the horror they dealt with to be overwhelming. There are now about 1,400 active cases the office is handling.
Many of the Family Support Team members are New Yorkers who experienced the horror of that day firsthand.
“I saw the attacks from my office window—I actually watched the second plane hit the tower,” said Melissa Torres, a family support specialist.
In the days following, Torres gave blood and donated items to a local church to aid the recovery efforts. An experienced social worker who has worked with cancer patients and homeless veterans, Torres knew her experience could help the victims and their families and that she could do so by working with the Red Cross. That same desire to give led much of the staff to actively seek opportunities to work with the Red Cross recovery effort.
Not Typical Social Work
Torres, who watched the second plane hit the tower, eventually became the case worker for a woman who lost her son on that same flight.
“In essence I saw the last few moments of his life, and as a result she and I share a curious bond,” Torres said.
Another client was too elderly to make it to the second anniversary memorial service to honor the memory of her son, so Torres went in her place.
American Red Cross volunteers receive a briefing at the site of an assistance center near the scene of the World Trade Center collapse.
Photographer: Daniel Cima
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“I got there in time to hear his name called,” she said. “It was surreal. This is truly something I never thought I would do as a part of social work.”
Specialists like Torres have gone with clients to identify remains, have helped make funeral or memorial service arrangements, and have attended many of those ceremonies to offer their clients another shoulder to lean on.
“We join the client wherever needed,” said Carolina Sydlowski, a Family Support Specialist. A simple, caring touch, rarely a part of typical social work settings, is often beneficial to SRP clients. “In this population, people need hugs. That is something you never normally do -- hug your client. But here, people need that physical sensation to know that they are safe, that they are still here.”
Case workers have also been able to take part in some of the more uplifting moments in their client’s lives, like attending a child’s graduation ceremony, or a memorial at a local firehouse. The gap that normally exists between client and caseworker is largely non-existent here.
Thriving Resources
“The oddest thing here is the money. We have always worked where you are just scrimping by, and now we have more than enough to meet our client’s needs,” Smith said.
Family Support Specialists are able to visit client’s homes as often as needed, for example, something that almost never happens under normal circumstances in social services because of heavy caseloads and limited financial resources.
Resources also exist to create programs based on the specific needs of the client. Supervisor Kristin Smith developed a mentoring program for some teenaged clients with support from the West Point military academy.
Many of the program’s clients come from backgrounds that are much more affluent than those typically seen in social work settings. At the same time, many victims’ families are hiding behind the money to delay dealing with the specific problems relating to their grief.
“Someone can be mad about money, when they are really mad about something else,” Smith said.
Clients are also dealing with a lot more anger than the specialists expected.
“I have worked with violent, repeat offenders before, and I’ve experienced much more anger here” for a variety of reasons, said Upton. “For a lot of people, there is just no resolution. For some there are no remains, or others are injured with no end to their pain in sight.”
To move forward toward some level of closure, case workers and clients develop a partnership plan to outline the goals of their work. When those goals have been met the client’s case is inactivated, but they are always able to come back for additional assistance if needed.
The SRP office is scheduled to close in September 2007, and the Red Cross is strengthening relationships with social service agencies to continue serving client’s needs after the office closes.
This article is first in a series about the September 11 Recovery Program of the Red Cross
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