Geri Marullo

We have all undoubtedly felt the impact of September 11th both personally and professionally over the past six months. It is important that we continue to support our clients and their families during these trying times. It is clear that our clients and their families have been greatly impacted and that they need our services now more than ever. At Child and Family Service we have collected information and data in an effort to quantify this impact. The analysis of our data is not complete and is still “raw,” but we hope it will assist in articulating the needs of Hawaii’s families. It would be interesting to ascertain if there are similar patterns in other service delivery organizations. From the general data, one can extrapolate the assumption that it is women and children that are suffering the most impact. Economic hardship and violence appear to be the two main issues of the most vulnerable of all-children.

In our organization, the program areas that appear to have felt the most impact in the last several months are 1) domestic violence, 2) child abuse and neglect, 3) entry-level employees including new high school graduates and immigrants, and 4) increases in employee assistance at the workplace. The data, as of early March, are provided under three main categories. They are 1) increase in demand for services, 2) changes in existing programs and the creation of new ones, and 3) collaborations to respond to increased service needs.

1. Increases in demand for services:
• 505 of our Child and Family Service families have had either a reduction in hours or have been laid off. Another 312 families see layoffs as eminent.
• The first utility to go is the Interruption of telephone service due to inability to pay
• 59 families have had a family member deployed for military purpose outside of Hawaii.
• There is a correlation between families being laid off and their ability to afford childcare, or to find flexible childcare while pursuing new employment.
• 953 family members have reported (or shared with clinical staff) an increase in anxiety, depressive symptoms, marital problems and generalized household stress.
• Felix program staff are seeing some escalation in behavioral difficulties, anger/hyperactivity. These data are anecdotal at present.
• Our foster parent program saw a significant reduction in the number of potential foster parents attending new training classes. Some foster parents already trained have lost their ability to meet income requirements, thus cannot continue to be potential foster parents. Several foster parents have had one military partner deployed, and we are monitoring the affects on the ability of military families to continue to foster under this situation.
• Our statewide diversion of families from the CPS system or "Diversion Programs" has seen significant increases in utilization. The most marked increases have been in the Hilo area, which has had a monthly increase in referrals averaging about 50%.
• Healthy Start our Primary Prevention of Child Abuse Program has seen an increase in families qualifying for the program under the category of "overburdened families."
• In the area of domestic violence, our Hilo shelter saw an increase in utilization in the first month of over 82%, and was consistently at 110% occupancy throughout the holidays. This is an unusual pattern. Our two Honolulu Shelters have been consistently at 120% capacity since September 11, which is also unusual. As of March, all Child and Family Service Shelters were above 100% capacity.
• Our Shelter hotlines had a 75% increase in calls in the weeks immediately after September 11. Calls tripled in October, and have been consistently higher month by month, especially on the neighbor islands.
• Our Developing Options to Violence program (DOV) has seen a consistent increase of calls and clients of about 25% per month.
• The most layoffs and reduction of work hours of clients have come from female clients in our options to violence prevention program (DOV).
• The Immigrant and Refugee Programs have seen a 26% increase in clients since September 11.
• Our Job Education Training program has seen a tripling of referrals. There has been a 25% increase in referrals from our Palolo Housing Program alone. By March, our Americorp program had received 50% more calls from applicants.
• There has been a significant increase in supervisory referrals to our employee assistance program, with marked increases in consultation for companies beginning to downsize.
2. Changes to existing programs and creation of new ones:
• CFS created an immediate phone response system to the general public, the day of September 11. Collateral material was developed and distributed to parents.
• We have changed our service delivery approach to include a strong emphasis on economic support, resume writing, referrals and assistance with unemployment, vocational services, food, housing, rental assistance and health benefits.
• Our job training programs have a new emphasis on computer training, nurse's aide and medical technology, moving away from tourism and travel.
• For programs that are therapy based, there has been a new emphasis on resource referral and linkage competing with treatment goals and therapeutic outcomes.
• We are providing specific expertise and information to companies needing to downsize. We have created specific programs for four companies thus far.
• We have developed training programs for foster parents in dealing with trauma and terrorism.
• We have developed collateral material for programs to distribute to families addressing issues of dealing with stress, how to talk to children about war, and media oversight of children.
• We have developed collateral materials for teachers in dealing with war and terrorism.
• We have become a conduit in picking up and distributing bulk food to families directly.
• We have developed a new workshop module out of our Training Institute for all human service professionals regarding issues and responses to terrorism in our community.
• We are currently seeking funding from the Chamber of Commerce Public Health Fund to provide planning dollars to assist the coordination of mental health professionals with lead agencies such as the Red Cross, in response to a crisis or terrorism attack.
3. Collaborations formed in response to the increases or changes in service demand:
Collaborations include the Red Cross, Hawaii Food Bank, Hawaii Together and the Hawaii Together Subcommittee regarding procurement relationships with the State through the Hawaii Community Foundation. We have also collaborated with Economic Opportunity agencies on the neighbor islands especially, to be sites for check pickup for rental and other subsistence support. Other collaborations are underway, and new data is being collected specifically asking this question.

For additional information and discussion, please feel free to email me, gmarullo@cfs-hawaii.org, or call me at 681-1418.