Safe Horizon: Adapting Crisis Intervention Strategies
to Address Psychological Needs Post 9/11

By Patricia Bryant, CSW, Senior Vice President
(February/March 2002)

The mission of Safe Horizon is to provide support, prevent violence, and promote justice for victims of crime and abuse, their families and communities. Founded in 1978, the organization is now the nation's leading nonprofit crime victim assistance and violence prevention agency. When the World Trade Center was attacked, Safe Horizon immediately made its programs and expertise available across the City - to victims, survivors, family members, and others uprooted or in trauma.

Critical Needs

From our experience working with victims of violent crime, we knew that three critical needs would emerge: emergency assistance; information regarding where individuals could receive help; and psychological support. Recognizing the very practical needs of families who lost loved ones and people who lost their jobs, beginning on September 14th at the Family Assistance Center, Safe Horizon became the first organization issuing emergency financial relief checks on a same-day basis. As of January 30th, Safe Horizon had issued over 40,000 emergency relief checks totaling $53 million from the September 11th Fund *and the New York State Crime Victims Board.

Resource Referral and Hotline

Within a week of the attack, Safe Horizon worked with Seedco to develop a comprehensive Resource Referral Guide, which social services organizations are still using to direct clients to emergency assistance as well as longer-term support. The Guide, supported by the September 11th Fund, is regularly updated to provide the most current information on benefits and services available to all those directly affected by the disaster. In October, Safe Horizon launched the Safe Horizon September 11th Support Hotline, 1 (866) 689-HELP. Supported by the September 11th Fund, the hotline provides information, referrals, and support to all who were impacted by the events of September 11th The hotline currently assists between 500 to 800 callers daily.

Immediately following September 11th, Safe Horizon quickly adapted our community crisis intervention strategy to address the psychological needs of New Yorkers affected by the attack. Our structured group intervention strategy, known as 'Response and Renewal Groups', is grounded in trauma theory and builds on individual and community resilience and strength. The group provides an opportunity for participants to share their reaction to the event allowing them to understand and normalize trauma reactions, discuss effective coping strategies and help them recognize when they may need additional mental health assistance. The intervention is always facilitated by a team of trained facilitators which always includes at least one MSW. Over 200 professionals have been trained in this intervention and many have joined Safe Horizon's Community Crisis Response Team, first as volunteers and more recently as Project Liberty staff. To date we have provided Response and Renewal Groups to over 1700 individuals. As of January 30th, over 85 schools, businesses, and other organizations had taken part in the sessions. In addition, a similar strategy was employed in our work with one government agency located in very close proximity to Ground Zero. In that case, we placed six professional staff at the agency for three months. They provided group intervention, individual crisis counseling and management support, reaching over 2000 employees.

As we conduct these group and individual crisis counseling sessions, we are always helping individual participants to assess their need for additional assistance. When they do so, the services of the Safe Horizon Counseling Center, a licensed mental health facility specializing in trauma counseling, are available. Through this program, as well as the Families of Homicide Victims Program, individual and group services are available for bereaved family members, those who evacuated the towers, and any others who wish additional help in addressing their reactions to the attack and subsequent events.

To ensure the staff providing the Crisis Response receive support, ongoing training and a forum to discuss emerging trends, Safe Horizon has instituted a monthly seminar for all crisis response team staff. We believe this seminar is not only critical to our ongoing quality assurance but to ensure our caregivers receive the support they need to prevent their own compassion fatigue.

As we move forward, Safe Horizon will continue to rely on its many social workers to help us continue to meet the needs of all New Yorkers: from those most directly affected to the 'everyday New Yorker' whose life was changed dramatically as well. Our approach is rooted in what we have learned in our twenty-five years of experience with crime victims: services should be delivered in a way that builds on the strength and resilience of the survivor, in a venue that is as accessible and nonstigmatizing as possible and that gives them a sense of control over their destiny. We are pleased to collaborate with our fellow providers in the public and private sector to help New Yorkers recover and rebuild.