Ethnic Variations in the level of disaster preparedness among consumers and service providers of In home support services

Ethnic Variations In the Levels of Disaster Preparedness Among Consumers and Service Providers of In Home Support Services

Speaker: Rashmi Gupta

San Francisco State University

The purpose of this study is to examine the ethnic and gender variations in the level of preparedness among senior consumers and service providers of San Francisco In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority. This program provides personal assistance services to low-income people with chronic and disabling conditions who need such assistance to remain safely in their homes. There is paucity of research on the level of preparedness among ethnic minority seniors. In this paper we examine what are the barriers and who the older adults will trust to provide them information should a disaster were to occur. Therefore this work will have a substantial impact on advancing and communicating knowledge on disaster preparedness among the elderly consumers of in-home supportive services. This is a mixed method study. Data was collected via a random sample survey of 195 SFIHSSPA's consumer population. The second method was using two focus groups of service providers of In home support services. A multi method approach was used to analyze the data using multivariate statistical analysis. Results of the quantitative portion of the study shows that (a) a large proportion of elderly consumers are not prepared if a disaster were to occur in San Francisco, (b) there are significant differences in disaster preparedness by gender, i.e., elder female consumers are more anxious about a disaster but are relatively more prepared than elder males (c) significant ethnic variations in that the Latinos were the least prepared and anxious about disaster preparedness, followed by Russian and Chinese. The results indicated that consumers would trust information on disaster preparedness to be disseminated by social workers from IHSS who conduct the initial assessment.

The qualitative data was derived from two focus groups and it was subjected to content analysis. The findings suggest the following themes: (a) service providers of IHSS are not trained to provide services to the vulnerable population that is the consumers, (b) providers desired hands-on-training on disaster preparedness, (c) Service providers provided care for altruistic reasons versus just for economic gain. This study provides important policy suggestions that will help to prioritize targeting the most vulnerable groups for help with disaster preparation.

Social workers of IHSS are the ones that assess the needs of consumers of IHSS. As part of the requirement for allocation of hours to providers the social workers are required to conduct a thorough assessment of the needs of the client based on the physical and mental limitations of the consumers. One of the implications of the finding is that radio, television and text messaging may be the new way of empowering older adults to seek information and tool kit for disaster preparedness. Implications for social work research will be discussed.