Several years ago I conducted a training session with newly hired disaster case managers in Houston, Texas. There were probably 70 trainees, and their backgrounds and experience was highly diverse. Several of the participants held advanced degrees of one type or another, while many were new college graduates or were still working on completing their courses of study. One of the points of emphasis of the training session was the development of a disaster recovery partnership plan, and the steps that are involved in completing this crucial step in the relationship between the case manager and the client. My message, over and over again, was and still is that the recovery plan is NOT simply a “to do” list for the case manager. Rather, it is designed to be a tool that the case manager uses to guide the client in his/her own recovery, and the bulk of the tasks or action items must be the responsibility of the client to complete along their journey, as opposed to simply becoming a checklist of the things for the case manager to do FOR the client.