Thanks to all of our affiliates who continue to move forward with the work of the consortium. We are thankful that Gustav has passed and are now beginning to reach out to our clients once again. As you do so, please remember to encourage all of those who have been impacted by Gustav to contact FEMA to register and to begin the processes related to their eligibility for assistance determination. Remember that our case managers are not FEMA officials and that we have no authority to conduct damage estimates of property. Instead, we are to encourage our clients to contact FEMA to begin their claims.

Our clients should not be left with the impression that our visiting them constitutes an official FEMA estimation of damages. Further, we must remain focused on our mission which is to provide high quality disaster case management services to individuals who are eligible for the MCMC program and that any work our case managers or other employees do in response to Gustav must remain separated in terms of record keeping and time spent. To date, we have received no indication that there will be an expansion of our scope of service. Therefore, we must continue to reach out to those clients on our lists and begin the process of intake and assessment. If part of our outreach identifies significant impact as a result of Gustav, we should clearly instruct the client to contact FEMA to begin the eligibility determination process. As it stands now, the MCMC project and the Gustav events are two distinctly different federal responses although we clearly know that some of our MCMC clients will also have been impacted.  We must continue to  conduct thorough assessments of clients needs so as to be able to reflect what our clients’ collective needs are once the opportunity for reporting presents itself. We at the leadership level are in daily contact with local, state, and federal officials and will provide relevant guidance and information to you as it becomes available.

Thank you all for your communications and questions over the last week. We have generated some responses to those questions and have also posted some other materials on the MCMC website. Please stay tuned to the site as that is where we will post updated information and documents that we hope will help you as you move forward with your MCMC work.

All the Best,

Stephen