Specific Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) policies and procedures impacted vulnerable populations both positively and negatively after Hurricane Andrew. Findings from 130 structured interviews with a randomized sample of victims sug-gest that in many cases FEMA policies were unclear, poorly explained, too rigid, and required a high level of middle-class fmancial management skills to comply w i t h eligibility requirements. These problems resulted in multi-generational families living together in one dwelling, and applicants from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds obtaining fewer services than they were entitled to receive. The outcome of the legal action (in which this study was used as evidence) that resulted in reparations to 21,000 Hurricane Andrew applicants and changes made in FEMA policies and procedures are discussed. fAnicle copies ovoiloble for a fee fmm The Haworth Document
Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: ge~info@howorth.com]Humcane Andrew was one of Florida's worst and the most expensive hunicane ever. Andrew hit South Florida on August 24, 1992. With sustained winds of over I50 mph, this humcane caused 40 deaths, seriously damaged more than 75,000 homes, and resulted in $30 billion in damages. More than a million people were without electricity, telephone, and water. The temperatures were in the mid 90's during the day and mid 80's at night (Clifford, Leen, & Doig, 1992).Often, after the shock of a catastrophic natural or human made disaster,
The principal barriers to universal screening for the cooccurring disorders of mental illness and substance abuse are training, time, cost, and a reliable and valid screen. Although many of the barriers to universal screening still remain intact, the lack of a cooccurring screen that is effective and can be administered in a cost efficient way is no longer an obstacle. This study examined the reliability, factor structure, and convergent validity of the 15-item AC-OK Cooccurring Screen. A total of 2,968 AC-OK Cooccurring Screens administrated to individuals who called or went to one of the nine participating mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities were administrated and analyzed. Principal axis factor (PAF) analysis was used in the confirmatory factor analysis to identify the common variance among the items in the scales while excluding unique variance. Cronbach's Alpha was used to establish internal consistency (reliability) of each subscale. Finally, the findings from the AC-OK Cooccurring Screen were compared to individual scores on two standardized reference measures, the addiction severity index and the Client assessment record (a measure of mental health status) to determine sensitivity and specificity. This analysis of the AC-OK Cooccurring Screen found the subscales to have excellent reliability, very good convergent validity, excellent sensitivity, and sufficient specificity to be highly useful in screening for cooccurring disorders in behavioral health settings. In this study, the AC-OK Cooccurring Screen had a Cronbach's Alpha of .92 on the substance abuse subscale and a Cronbach's Alpha of .80 on the mental health subscale.
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