Telephone: CSU (415) 473-6666
One of the mandates of the state of California for each county mental health system is to provide community mental health services as appropriate to people affected by disasters. The County of Marin Behavioral Health and Recovery Services has an emergency response capacity with the Disaster Response Team. The Disaster Assistance Coordinator helps to develop and update the Disaster Response Plan in collaboration with other emergency staff from the county and is directly responsible for the direction and management of the disaster mental health response capability. The Disaster Assistance Coordinator reports to the YFS Division Director.
The Disaster Team Coordinator, in collaboration with the Workforce and Education Training Manager and Division Director of Children’s Mental Health is responsible for ensuring clinicians across the system have been trained to respond to the psychological needs of disaster victims and first responders. They provide critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) to those involved with traumatic highly stressful events. The local community often calls on these trained staff to provide counseling for small groups in the community when a traumatic event or accident has occurred. The team also provides mutual aid to other counties struggling to respond to large disasters of all kinds.