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Psychosocial-Spiritual Disaster Care: Building Resilience and Creating a New Reality from the Depths of Despair

FRIDAY, February 28, 2025
10:00 am – 12:00 pm (eastern time)
Live Webinar on Zoom
(You will need to register to receive login information)

Registration: 2 CEU Credit Hours
General:  Through Feb. 18, $50; Feb. 19-Feb. 27, $60
Wurzweiler Alumni and Current WSSW Field Instructors: Through Feb. 18, $40; Feb. 19-Feb. 27, $50
All Current Students: $15
Registration closes on 02/27/25 at 5:00 Eastern Time (EST)

As a result of climate change and other naturally occurring events, we have been faced with major natural disasters, including the recent Los Angeles fires and extreme flooding in East Texas and North Carolina. 

As a responder in these disasters, Rabbi Shira Stern will discuss training preparation, working the operation, and avoiding compassion-fatigue. As grief is an integral part of disaster response, she will focus on how to acknowledge and articulate grief, and identify those problems to help solve and those to circumvent to move forward in the healing process.

Dr. Robin Cox will share key insights into how climate change is amplifying natural disasters and the psychosocial impact of disasters in the context of global warming. She will explore evidence-based strategies for supporting communities and ethical challenges in supporting low resource, high stress environments. 

Dr. Ronald Schumann will introduce use of the photovoice method in post-disaster settings and discuss his research from the Northern California wildfires to understand the role of place attachment in housing recovery decisions. His findings will better inform social work interactions with disaster survivors navigating long-term community recovery.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be better equipped to:

1. Appreciate the many layered impacts of natural disasters on individuals and communities and how a team approach offers comprehensive support for clients and volunteers.
2. Identify and define specific strategies for supporting and managing stress, coping, and mental health during disaster recovery.
3. Navigate the delicate balance between acknowledging despair and encouraging hope.
4. Understand ways in which survivors’ place-based identities shape their approaches to disaster recovery.

Rabbi Shira Stern, DMin is a Board Certified Jewish Chaplain and was a Past-President of Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains. She devotes herself to providing pastoral care as a Disaster Spiritual Care Manager for the Red Cross for national deployments and serves during non-disaster times as Division Advisor for the Northeast and Lead for Massachusetts and Northern New England. She has been a hospital and hospice chaplain, Director of the Joint Chaplaincy Program of Greater Middlesex County (NJ), and the Director of the Jewish Institute for Pastoral Care in New ����app City, part of the HealthCare Chaplaincy. 

Rabbi Stern was founding Director of the Center for Pastoral Care and Counseling in Marlboro, NJ, providing individual and family therapy and specializing in bereavement. She served as Rabbinic Associate at Temple Rodeph Torah in Marlboro, NJ until she retired in 2020. She was ordained by the Hebrew Union College in New ����app.

Robin Cox, PhD advances leadership in climate and disaster resilience. As Founding Director of the Resilience By Design Lab (RbD) at Royal Roads University in Victoria, Canada, Dr. Cox draws on her expertise as a psychologist and researcher focused on the psychosocial dimensions of disasters and climate change. 

Trained as a counseling psychologist, Cox brings over 20 years of teaching, research, and advocacy focused on cultivating resilience and leadership in individuals and communities affected by disasters and climate change. Climate action workforce development is central to her mission, promoting a Climate Action Competency Framework, an equity-focused approach to working with disaster and climate affected youth, and global disaster and climate adaptation research.

Ronald Schumann, PhD is an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Management and Disaster Science at the University of North Texas, the first US undergraduate program in emergency management. A human geographer by training, his research explores how people-place relationships in long-term disaster recovery guide housing recovery, hazard mitigation, and commemoration activities. 

Dr. Schumann’s post-disaster fieldwork spans 15 years, including hurricanes (Katrina, Sandy, Harvey) and destructive wildfires (Valley, Tubbs, Camp, Dixie). His current research explores wildfire survivors’ decisions to rebuild or relocate after experiencing housing loss, in addition to a study examining the efficacy of community-level wildfire risk reduction efforts.

PODCAST

Rabbis, chaplains, and social workers are often called on to provide spiritual care near life’s end. Whether in response to serious illness, advanced cognitive or physical decline in old age, or unexpected, tragic violence, health care professionals and clergy need to respond compassionately and effectively with families facing spiritual, emotional, and existential crises. Clips from Wurzweiler School of Social Work’s “Spirituality Near the End of Life” Conference in July 2019 include leading clergy, chaplains, and social workers offering their knowledge, skills, and wisdom to assist professionals seeking to better integrate spiritual care into their professional and community work.

Episode 1

Episode 2