″How We Manage As a Community, a Collective, a Team″: The Importance of Trauma Informed Supervision for Case Managers after Wildfire Disaster

Climate disasters are rapidly increasing in number and severity, posing serious challenges for health and wellbeing. In 2021 alone, climate disasters (e.g., wildfires; floods; landslides; earthquakes; extreme weather events) affected 2 out of 5 Americans in 820 counties nationally. In response, there is a growing focus on adaptation to and recovery from climate disasters. This adaptation requires professionals attend to survivor trauma and stress, as recovery often takes years. While there is growing evidence of the need for trauma informed care for survivors, we know less about the experiences and needs of professionals working with survivors, many of whom are from the same communities and faced also with the very same disaster. It is important, therefore, that we know more about the ways that trauma informed care ought to be implemented not only for survivors, but for the case managers who care for them. Responding to this need, in the research presented here, we detail the ways that trauma-informed supervision undergirds effective disaster case management. Our data come from in-depth interviews with Disaster Case Managers (DCMs) working within a state office for emergency management and resilience (N=13). Using content analysis, we analyzed the narratives of DCMs to uncover how their working environments and supervisory models reflect principles of trauma informed supervision. In line with content analysis, our work reflected a balance of inductive and deductive work (that is, arising upwards from our data while also being organized from the top down by our theory).

Results highlight the ways DCMs experience considerable compassion fatigue and stress. Our analysis also illustrated the importance of trauma-informed care (SAMHSA, 2014), which we used to help us organize our findings. Our findingspoint to ways multiple modes of trauma-informed supervision within disaster settings, demonstrating the importance of agencies and supervisors recognizing the trauma workers face; creating and maintaining open and collaborative relationships within and among case managers; establishing trust, safety, and empowerment; and attending to issues of culture, history, and identity. For example, DCMs noted how important it was that their supervisors ensured they had both physical and psychological safety, as well as decompression time. Transparency was also highlighted by this DCM, who explained the importance of clear lines of communication in addressing problems workers bring up. Having trust from supervisors enabled case managers to respond more effectively to clients' needs, allowing them to approach the work in holistic and creative ways that honor agency within the entire service system. Empowerment, voice and choice were also central for DCMs: their ability to focus on survivor, rather than funder or agency priorities, illustrated the advantages of case managers being supported and empowered. It was also clear that, among disaster case managers, strength came from a team approach that provided a sense of shared experience and mutual support. Our work helps further understandings of dimensions of trauma informed care that are critical for disaster contexts; findings may be applied to social work supervision training and practice, helping avoid secondary stress and burn-out among disaster case managers.