By Ann McCreary
Room One in Twisp will become the supervising agency for four disaster case managers, who have previously worked under Okanogan County Community Action Council in Okanogan.
The case managers were hired last summer to assist people with immediate disaster relief after the Carlton Complex Fire and subsequent floods and mudslides. As the focus moves into long-term recovery, agencies involved in the recovery effort decided that Room One is best suited to oversee the case managers, said Elana Mainer, Room One executive director.
One of the case managers is housed at Room One, one is at Community Action in Okanogan and two are in Pateros. They will continue to work at their current locations for the time being, said Mainer.
Room One, which provides social services in the Methow Valley, will support their work by making sure they receive ongoing training and have access to needed resources, Mainer said.
She said the disaster case managers’ work aligns with Room One’s approach to providing social services. “It’s about being dynamic and creative and compassionate in the way we care for each other,” Mainer said.
The positions will be funded through the Carlton Complex Long Term Recovery Group, which hopes to raise enough money to support at least two positions through June 2016. Their salaries will not impact Room One’s other programs, Mainer said.
The disaster case managers meet with disaster survivors to support them with issues related to housing, finances, social and emotional health, and to connect them to needed services.
Hayley Riach, disaster case manager at Room One, said she and other case managers have seen new people coming in for assistance over the past month, eight months after the fires. The new clients include some who lost their primary residences to the fire, she said.
“I had two primary intakes last week,” Riach said Monday (April 13).
In some cases, the new clients had moved away after losing their homes and were moving back to the area, Riach said.
“The way some people reacted to the disaster was that they fled. So we may have people coming back,” she said.
Another person was “resourceful and had a good support network … He stated he didn’t want to take away from other people who may have needed services more than him,” Riach said.
“Things will evolve and change just because of the changed nature of recovery. There are different needs popping up,” she said.
Riach said she has worked with about 75-80 cases, and has assisted many other people with one-time referrals to services.
She said the case managers will try to move to “a more mobile case management style,” spending more time in the community.
