Bill Walker, Director of Protective Services, will speak on How Disaster Social Services Fits Into The Big Picture, a session geared to providing a roadmap for disaster services managers to ensure their programs fit effectively into the disaster services framework.
Donelda Laing, Manager of Family and Community Support Services (FCSS), will join forces with Jody Evans-Urion, Beaverlodge Community Programmer with the County of Grande Prairie and Kathleen Turner, Director of FCSS with the County on creating a regional disaster social services plan.
Consultants Katherine Fleming and Kathy Tretiak have been working with Persons with Developmental Disabilities to involve people with disabilities and functional needs in emergency planning. Their session is titled Ready, Willing and Abled.
A survivor of the Pine Lake tornado eight years ago will be among the featured speakers at the event.
Bill Gourley, whose wife, Lisa, died in the July 14, 2000 disaster while protecting their one-year-old son at the Green Acres Campground in Central Alberta will be making his first formal speaking engagement following the tragedy. He will speak to delegates in the hopes of ensuring an effective response to future catastrophes and that victims needs are addressed.
The tornado carried 300 kilometre an hour winds and claimed 12 lives while critically injuring about 100 more.
The forum is being held Tuesday and Wednesday, May 6 and 7, at the Edmonton Campus of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). The event is geared to helping personnel responsible for disaster social services at the municipal level become better prepared to handle their roles. The theme of the conference is Company’s coming! Are you ready for unexpected guests?
“Our discussion for the 2008 Forum centre on the human impacts of events,” says Dean McKellar, from the City of Edmonton and Chair of the Planning Committee. “We know that things can be replaced and rebuilt, but the human impacts can be both subtle and severe and may require expertise, care and ongoing support, and disaster social services personnel have an integral role to play.”
Other sessions will include community recovery, pandemic planning, animal disaster management, disaster mental health, creating a disaster social services plan, disaster social services and persons with disabilities, personal preparedness, municipal disaster services planning and the oil and gas sector, and ensuring disaster services planning is successful.
The Disaster Social Services Forum 2008 is sponsored by the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, NAIT, and Alberta Municipalities.