Nancy J. Stephani and Barbara Cramer
Hancock County Critical Incident Stress Management Team
2615 Goldenrod Lane
Findlay, OH 45840
419-423-9499
419-423-5206
This workshop will provide a quick overview of Critical Incident Team development in Hancock County, its evolution to a
three-tiered system serving different populations and linkage to the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation.
Handout samples will be provided for team application, basic procedures, and Critical Incident Stress Handouts. Basic
interventions will be reviewed including on-site demobilizations, defusings, debriefings, consultation and follow-up care.
The team will then discuss recent deployments to New York to work with the New York Police Department through the
POPPA - Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance - program set up to respond to the World Trade Center Disaster.
The Hancock County Team is linked to the state CISM teams and through them to the ICISF who were consulted within 48
hours of the disaster. Volunteer teams from all over the country and Canada have been on site since week one providing
peer assistance to the first responders in New York. Other teams have been deployed at the Port Authority, though that
service has been discontinued. Fire fighters continue to function in "operations mode" and have not had formal CISM
services through peer teams.
CISM is a peer driven model that is deployed only when requested through official channels. For this reason, only police
officers in New York and the Port Authority personnel have been served through ICISF. Many other organizations
responding, including regional, state and national disaster teams, come with their own CISM staff and every person is
debriefed at the end of every shift as a normal operational process without the use of volunteer professionals.
Hancock County has responded by sending a total of three teams, all consisting of police officers and one mental health
professional and all trained in the ICISF model. This has caused some division within the local team as many firefighters
and EMTs on the team were not included at the mandate of the national coordinators. This has not been evenly understood
among the members and is a continuing topic of regular education. Positive effects on the local team include the greatly
increased level of training among those participating, doing as many as 20 debriefings in one week, increased use of peers
as team leaders, greater linkage to the state CISM system and greater publicity in the community for the need and benefits
of CISM.
All three teams responding were debriefed themselves prior to their leaving New York and again upon their return. The
workshop will include an overview of the experiences in New York, a summary of some of the stress reactions
experienced, lessons learned from responding to the disaster, model adaptations made during the prolonged response to the
disaster (debriefing folks 5 months after the trauma) and discussion of methods to prepare for future local, regional and
national disasters. A basic overview of incident command structure and entities involved in responding to a disaster of this
magnitude will also be covered including Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency, DMORT, NTSB and more.
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