Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Children and Families: A Classroom, Community and Consultation Treatment Approach

Project Fleur-de-lis (PFDL), a program of Mercy Family Center, is a school-based mental health program designed to provide long-term care and recovery for children and their families in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Through a partnership with schools, local health and human service agencies and national experts, the mission of Project Fleur-de-lis is to empower students, teachers and parents of New Orleans area schools to recover, renew and restore in order to inspire healing throughout our community. The project offers a three tiered Stepped Trauma Pathway for mental health intervention which includes Classroom Based Interventions (CBI), the use of Cognitive Behavioral Interventions for Trauma in Schools (CBITS), and referrals out to community providers and the use of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT).

To date, 4,728 students registered with PFDL, and 56 schools are participating. For the school year 2006-2007 268 students were referred to the program and for the school year 2007-2008 over 500 students have been referred.

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network's Hurricane Assessment Instrument is used within PFDL as part of the program's registration for each child. Information taken from 2,262 children formally registered or “pre-registered” with the program during the 2006 – 2007 school year revealed significant levels of trauma which include: 27% of children had their neighborhoods destroyed, 17% of children were separated from their parents or caregivers, 17% had a pet lost or killed due to the hurricane, 5% were trapped during the storm, 76% were displaced by the storm, and 18% experienced a past major trauma. A recently completed research project conducted in cooperation with the Rand Corporation and the Center for Traumatic Stress in Children & Adolescents - Allegheny General Hospital within PFDL suggested significantly higher rates of Post-Traumatic stress among children in the New Orleans Metropolitan area 17 months after Hurricane Katrina. One-hundred and ninety-five children were screened from three project schools for inclusion into our study using the Child PTSD Symptom Scale (Foa, 2001). Results from these screening instruments demonstrated that 52 – 76% of children met criteria for being traumatized nearly two years after landfall.

School counselors who referred families in to Project Fleur-de-lis completed the Pediatric Symptom Checklist, a screening tool for identifying psychosocial problems developed by Massachusetts General Hospital. A comparison of those symptoms will be shown year by year post-Katrina. In addition, the types of services requested; psychiatric evaluation, psycho-educational evaluation as well as individual and family therapy, will be reviewed.