Recovery - Critical Incident Stress Management

Recovery seems to be the 800lbs gorilla in the room.  No one wants to acknowledge it, and few schools have robust recovery plans.  A few weeks ago, I found out ours weren't as robust as I would have liked.

A high school freshman got into an argument with his mother, and went up to his room and shot himself.  School administrators and teachers went to the high school late at night to open it up for students to come and share their grief.

A week after the event, I asked one of the counselors how she was doing.  Her answer?  "I'm done."  She looked it too.  There was no emotion on her face, she looked tired, and she confirmed it by telling me, "If another kid or teacher comes to me for help, I've got nothing left to give."

The responsibility for that was mine. I am the one who creates the emergency plans.  I had planned for the kid's trauma, but not the staff's.  I promised her I would get some help to her and the other counselors.  I called Beth Gulley, a Fire Safety Educator with the Sugar Creek Township Fire Department, and a friend of mine.  I told her what had happened, and she gave me the number of Russ Jarvis, a chaplain at Hancock Regional Hospital.

Russ is the head of the hospital's Critical Incident Stress Management Team.  He told me what he and his team needed, and I passed it along to the high school principal, Keith Fessler.  The bottom line was that Russ brought his team to the high school less than a week after being contacted. 

Due to confidentiality concerns, I will not share what went on in the hour-long session, but it was very emotional, and I got positive feedback from everybody.  We are trying to schedule a follow-up meeting this week, but as it's the last week of school, we'll have to wait and see.

Since then, I attended the debriefing of that session with the CISM team, and I will work with them to develop a CISM team for ourselves.

And you can darn well bet I'm reworking my recovery plans.