*This text is being provided in a rough draft format . Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings .*.

APRIL 2021
Thursday, October 21
Inclusive disaster resilience during a pandemic

	Mellie:  Welcome in, everyone.  We will get started in a few moments when everyone has had a chance to join us.
	Okay.  We're going to go ahead and get standard.  Hello and welcome to everyone.  My name is Mellie, I am the secretary of APRIL board of directors.  I will be facilitating today.  Thank you for joining inclusive disaster resilience during a pandemic.  I would like to mention a few housekeeping items before we get started.  First, when you scroll over the screen, a menu bar pops up.  Depending on what device you are on, you can find that menu bar at the top or the bottom of the screen.  That is where you will find the closed captioning for today's session.  You can view the captioning by selecting the CC tab on the menu bar.  For sign language interpreting, you can find the interpreter on the screen.  If you would like to change the size of the screen the slides are being shown, you can select the line in the middle to make the slides larger or smaller.  If you have any technical issue, please use the chat feature to alert us.  You can find that word bubble in the same menu bar.  If you would like to turn the chat feature off if you are using a screen reader, you can do so by pressing ALT and H.  For Q and A times, please note that the Q and A box is in the menu bar.  Please only submit questions there as they may get lost in the chat.  To ask a question or make a comment, you can also select the hand option on the menu bar.  That allows us to know that you have a question.  For those on the phone today or using key strokes, we ask that you press star at 9 or ALT and Y on your key pad to raise your hand.  We'll then let you know when you can unmute.  You can select the unmute or ALT and A if using key strokes.  Remember, if you do join into the conversation, please keep all background noise down as much as possible to allow us to hear you clearly.  And with that, I will go ahead and turn it over to our presenters today.  Thank you, so much
	»  Shaylin:  Hello everyone.  Thank you for joining us today.  Alongside me
	»  German:  German
	»  Shaylin:  We have our team with us today, Priya and Melissa and they will introduce themselves shortly.  We will give a quick audio description of ourselves.  My name is Shaylin, I use she/her pronouns.  I am a younger woman with light complexion skin and long, curly brown hair wearing a black top today
	»  German:  I use he/him.  I am brown skin, Puerto Rican man in a wheelchair, black hair pulled back in a bun.
	»  Shaylin:  We will have the rest of the team go first
	»  Melissa:  I am Melissa Marshall and I use she/her pronouns.  I have long what I call COVID gray hair and I am wearing a Tonal colored shirt today
	»  Hello, everybody, my name is Priya Penner.  I use she/her pronouns.  I am a brown woman with black hair and today I am wearing a black dress.
	»  German:  Again, we are very excited to be with you all today.  Thank you to the APRIL team for hosting this wonderful conference and making it an event that can be reached by all.  We are happy that you can join us today.  So very important conversation that we feel the entire country needs to be having at this time
	»  Shaylin:  With that, we want to get started into our workshop today titled inclusive disaster resilience during a pandemic.  We will start by sharing a little bit more about the partnership.  We are the only U.S. disability led organization with a focus mission on equal access, disability rights and full inclusion of disabled people, older adults, and people with access and functional needs during and after disasters and emergencies.  So essentially, we are the boots and wheels on the ground response.  We are community resilience and a capacity builders and disability rights experts before, during and after disasters.  We know that people with disabilities are disproportionately impacted during disasters and that's why the partnership has a sole focus mission on the rights and needs of people with disabilities during and after emergencies.  Next slide, please
	Today we're going to get into some of our objectives and we have a lot that we would like to touch upon and certainly we can talk about these objectives and pieces for hours and, certainly, we will have a slide towards the end on other ways to get involved with us at the partnership and continue these conversations.  But today, we hope to touch upon empowering community wide disability inclusive emergency and disaster preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.  Understanding the disproportionate impacts people with disabilities face during and after disasters and disability rights to advocate for, protect, maintain and advance in am systems emergency management advocacy.  Understanding, exploring and discussing good and promising practices for inclusive emergency preparedness to work towards and advocate for in your community and understanding and advocating the real emergency access for aging and disability inclusion also known as REAADI and DRMA in your community Nationwide.  With that, we have a lot to get into today and we certainly want to hear from
	You all.  I want to also really emphasize for folks to add any questions into the Q and A.  We will address questions throughout, so don't hesitate to put them in there.  And we would love to address them.
	So let's get started first by talking about some facts.  One thing that we say and love to educate folks upon in our communities, especially inside and outside of the community is that people with disabilities, disabled people are 2—4 times more likely to die or be injured in a disaster or an emergency than non—disabled people.  This is largely due to the disproportionate impacts that we all face that we will touch upon in just a moment.
	And then also, after a natural disaster, white people accumulate more wealth while residents of color accumulate less wealth.  Also talking about the social —— socioeconomic impacts that we will touch on, as well.
	»  Priya:  Just to add —— just to add that this last fact really emphasizes —— let me just explain the last fact, first.  This fact is talking about how when communities experience disasters, communities that are predominantly white receive more resources and support than communities of color and, actually, at the end of the day, after the natural Disaster has occurred and recovery is happening, those counties with predominantly white populations actually have gained wealth while communities of color have lost significant amount of personal money, personal wealth, but also, you know, infrastructure and just safety.  So I think this quote really summarizes that there's this huge disparity communities of color and predominantly white folks and how these communities experience disasters.  Shaylin?
	»  Shaylin:  Thank you, Priya.  And to our next slide, if you will, as we continue talking about the disproportionate impacts, we have four bullet points on the screen on our slide deck and I do also want to mention, I'm sure others have heard in other workshops that you've been apart of, that these materials will be available on the conference platform following or probably already are, I should say, the PowerPoint, as well as we've included a resource document and we will refer to some of those resources throughout our presentation today.
	So as we —— and Mary is correcting me that these resources are already on the platform —— conference platform, so do check those out, as well.  But I want to talk about, as we call quote/unquote, in blue sky days or no disasters upon us, we all know that there are barriers to resources, to accessing resources, resources such as housing, our home and community based services, access to transportation, food assistance and financial assistance just as some examples that we all know can be difficult to access without a disaster upon us, perhaps without a pandemic upon us.  When A disaster strikes in community, that access to resources is disproportionately impacted such as lack of access, like communication access, equally effective communication, such as evacuation alerts being equally effective and communication providing that equal access in different formats for folks to be able to know those evacuation alerts, as well as physical access.  When we think about evacuating first is, well, where do we evacuate to?  Is there a shelter near me that is wheelchair accessible, for instance?  And maybe you know that information, maybe you don't, and that's certainly one place where we can all start conversations within our communities.
	Perhaps you get to a shelter and you find that there are steps to get inside or perhaps there are no steps to get inside but you cannot then get throughout the shelter to the restrooms that are inside or the —— the food area or the sleeping area.  And those pieces of accessibility, then when we add on things like effective communication and having ASL interpreters at shelters and other forms of communication and access needs.  These things are the little details that we all, as disability advocates, know that we have to continue to fight for each and every day and during disasters, that doesn't change.  Certainly, that's why we have to have these conversations at all times throughout each planning phase, throughout each season connecting with the local emergency managers, public health officials, folks that have decision making power within our communities to make sure that they are planning and incorporating these pieces of planning and recovery, as well as including us —— people with disabilities, disability led organizations like centers for independent living across the nation if these important conversations
	Other disproportionate impacts that our community faces during disasters is the lack of access to resources generally before, during and After disasters, as we touched upon.  Things like housing, transportation, food and financial assistance, the things that we continue to need each and everyday are certainly impacted and disproportionately impacted during disasters.  As we mentioned prior, as well, folks socioeconomic status —— people that are poor, especially people with disabilities are more likely to have of lower income and the financial assistance that's needed to evacuate, for instance, or to shelter in place somewhere else or in your home may require pieces of financial assistance that just may not be available and that is where we are oftentimes falling through the cracks of needing resources in the most dire times.
	People with disabilities are —— and access requirements that I have mentioned throughout these pieces are often an after thought and why it's so vitally important that we all start these conversations within our communities if they aren't already started.  Get involved with them if they are inactive.  Making sure that people with disabilities and lived experience with at these tables.  These are all things that you all know that we have to keep doing throughout each systems advocacy and individual advocacy that we do and certainly doesn't stop Throughout disasters
	»  German:  The impacts intertwine.  All this happens at the same time and something that we can all relate to.  In preparedness conversations, we are told to have a month or two extra of medication.  Have the economic support to purchase sometimes up to a thousand dollars of supplies in preparation, too.  These are things that our communities, most on fixed incomes, do not have the opportunities to and exacerbates the events when they occur.
	»  Shaylin:  Next slide, please.  Thank you.  And we're going to sit on this slide for a minute and this slide was read "civil rights are not waived during disasters or emergencies" and this is our mantra, the moto, the one we raise for all to hear and listen and absorb information because it's certainly the one that we often find people outside of the disability community, largely emergency managers, public health officials often forget that our civil rights are not waived during disasters or emergencies and what we mean by this is all of our civil rights that we continue to fight for each and everyday are continued to need to be upheld, enforced, monitored, especially when federal dollars are being put in response to disasters and oftentimes we find that.  There are no waivers to our civil rights, especially when the federal dollars in place.  But I'm going to call on Melissa to talk more on this
	»  Melissa:  Thank you.  Again, I live for disability civil rights.  Civil rights are not waived.  What that means is entities, whether it's a state or local government entity or a non—profit organization or a place of public accommodation —— a business —— they still have to comply with their obligations under the Americans with Disabilities act that exist already.  They can't say, "oh, we're going to comply, but this is a disaster" or "yes, it's A disaster so that's why we don't have interpreters there" and that's why we need interpreters more.  When there are federal dollars attached, there are always obligations under the rehabilitation act section 504 and 508.  There are always obligations.  Sometimes I feel that everybody knows this until this winter I was reading an op—ed piece written by a physician.  She said it's a shame that civil rights are suspended during disasters.  She put that in her writing.  She is an expert in medicine, not the law.  All we need to debunk and expel these myths.  This is a time when it's most important that are civil rights are not protected and not delegated.  Thank you, Shaylin.
	»  Shaylin:  Thank you, Melissa.  I forgot to note that she is one of our lead trainers on her topic, especially one of her favorite topics, I might add, and certainly as a lawyer and having the subject matter expertise, we always appreciate having those perspectives and adding those highlights.  Thank you, Melissa
	»  Melissa:  Shaylin can keep talking for an hour, so you're blessed
	»  Shaylin:  We have more opportunities and we will talk more for folks to hear more.  Anything you want to add, Priya, while we are on this slide?
	»  Priya:  No, Melissa and you all covered it quite nicely
	»  German:  In disasters, the pandemic became a nationally declared disaster.  It was the first time in the U.S. history that the source of funds that supports states through federal member number of is the Stafford Act.  This traditionally, in hurricanes, wildfires, so localized critical disasters that exceed the state's ability to respond and are overwhelmed, these are the funds that support.  This pandemic has been the first time in U.S. history that has made this nationally declared residential disaster.  When we saw this happening at the beginning, we saw many civil rights being waived.  The civil right to inform decision and, very specifically, equitable communication.  How many briefings at the federal and state level and the city and county did not have ASL interpreter next to them?  And some still don't.  There need to be lawsuits for precedent to be added.
	More personally, the right to have someone, even if it's an ombudsman to get out.  For almost a year, no one was allowed in.  And when the disasters happen, traditionally, so —— for example, in Texas during the winter storm earlier this year with hurricane Ida in Louisiana, we have additional disasters declared for that area.  In this case, and with the pandemic —— with the emergency —— public health emergency, there are two major civil rights that, sadly, are being harmed:  Our right to have a three—day hospitalization before we are put in an institution is waived.  And from your house, they may take you straight to a nursing home immediately after a hurricane or wildfire, for example.  Now, during the pandemic, they could do this in states that have ——
	»  Shaylin:  Crisis standards of care.  And just to add to this, what this waiver is called and is enacted during federally declared disasters or public health emergencies is the 1135 waiver and this is what waives the pieces that German just mentioned and is quite honestly a fast track to a nursing facility.  Oftentimes we see persons with disabilities institutionalized after disasters because shelters don't know what to do with disabilities because they didn't plan with us.  So they think that the next best solution is to send us to institutions or nursing facilities and other types of institutions and we all know that our right should be to the community and home and commune based services, especially for folks that are within the community prior to the storm and that the storm then forces folks to —— or a disaster —— to a nursing facility is another disproportionate impact.  As we all know, once you are in a facility or institution, it is that much harder —— twice as harder, if not much more, to get out.  And with our Olmstead decision and the right to be in the most integrated settings appropriate to our needs, certainly, this is another violation of that.  I don't know, Melissa, if you would like to add anything else or Priya
	»  Melissa:  Yeah, I just wanted to say the federal government CMS is literally waiving its obligations during the disaster because it's a disaster.  So what can happen, Shaylin talked about the fast track to institutionalization.  It could be the hospital emergency —— the hospital is full and you are in the emergency room, so it would just be easy to send you to a nursing home, and particularly in times of COVID, we all know how dangerous it is.  It's always been dangerous, but nursing homes are more death pits than they were before.  We will talk about that later.  You can call an ambulance because your personal assistant didn't show up and at some point, they can decide to send you rather to a hospital, they can decide to send you to an institution.  So that's how people get fast tracked to institutions.  You can be in a hospital and they decide that someone else needs the bed more, having nothing to do with your health, and bump you into an institution.  Those are just examples
	»  Shaylin:  We will touch more on that.  On our next slide, we will show a brief video clip and it's a trailer of a documentary titled the right to be rescued and this film was created by rooted in rights and there are plenty of resources.  We did add also, in this slide, the link to the full documentary and this piece clip really highlights sort of the ongoing disproportionate impacts, the systemic issues people with disabilities face in disasters and some of the false expectations that some of these planning pieces that emergency managers may think are a solution for us, rather than planning with us and knowing that it is not, that they —— some of these actions that they take in preparation for disasters actually harm disabled people.  So this clip is just a minute long and it will be added —— or it is on the platform, as well, for folks to check out and really encourage everyone to watch the full documentary, as well.  I will let Priya press play.  And I want to make note, Priya, that you do have to have your mute button off so everyone can hear.  We do not hear
	»  Priya:  I apologize, I am not hearing any sound
	»  Mary:  If you can just please stop sharing screen and reshare screen and make sure that the little check mark in the left hand side is checked —— okay, perfect.
	»  Priya:  Yep, I had done that.  I my apologies for technology.  Okay.  I am not getting any sound at all.  Um... maybe if we do it like this.
	»  Video:  When the levies broke and water came ——
	»  Priya:  Thank you for bearing with me with our technology.
	»  Video:  It was when the levies broke and the water came that the problems really started occurring
	»  We wondered what to do for the city in general let alone a population of people that are normally overlooked
	»  For people with disabilities, the impact is greater
	»  I just laid there for five days and watched the helicopters fly around the building
	»  They said what are you doing still there.  She said, they've abandoned me
	(Piano)
	»  When you know in advance who is likely to be most harmed and you don't do anything about it, that's a choice you make as to lives that are more valuable
	»  Rooted in Rights original documentary.  (Music)
	»  This is Shaylin.  Thank you, Priya and thank you all for bearing with us while we navigated the technology.  I know it's a short clip but that's a teaser to get you all to click on that.  The documentary is an hour long or less and is certainly worth the watch.  I really encourage folks to check that out and share in your networks, as well.
	»  Priya:  As we move into the next slide, I will add it's a great watch and does a fantastic job of really sharing on the ground experiences of disabled people.  So if you are interested or, you know, if wondering what it's like for folks who need to evacuate but can't or who want to evacuate and went to a shelter, that's not great.  This is a great video to sort of show that and some of the barrier, as well.
	»  Shaylin:  Thank you, Priya, I couldn't agree more.  It's a great tool for educating others, as well, that may not be familiar with the important issues that we all have been talking about today and certainly that we all continue to raise within our communities.  This film also highlights what is on the slide now that is titled the reality.  We have two bullet points.  The first is false expectations of "registries" and "special needs shelters" and the other is institutionalization during disaster and emergencies.  We will go on the first part and we put these in quotes because, quite honestly, these are one of the, quote/unquote, solutions that the managers feel that is the solution for people with disabilities to not be left behind, but oftentimes we find that, then, it is the way that people with disabilities fall through the gaps and the cracks and get left behind in disasters and emergencies.
	The first piece is registries.  A lot of times, emergency managers are thinking of ways to be inclusive and try to make sure that they are thinking of people with disabilities in times of response and recovery and one of those solutions, ideas that has come about is the need of registries.  Up and these registries are —— and certainly, there are many types of registries, generally speaking, and we are not speaking about those general registries for other types of needs.  We know there is many types of hotlines and other resources, we are talking specific types of localized registries in times of disasters for people with disabilities to sign up to to tell their local emergency management or their locality that they are a person with a disability, that they have access needs or, perhaps, are power dependent, perhaps, needing electricity for durable medical equipment and any other types of sort of disability related needs that would need to be prioritized in a disaster.
	So these registries can be specific to making sure that there is a list of disabled people in your area for localities to check off and check in with folks.  However, oftentimes, as we all know, we are mobile.  People with disabilities and we are not always at our homes and not always at home when a disaster strikes or after wards and also, the connectivity certainly of reaching folks if you are not in that address that is identified on the registry can be problematic in that response.
	Another use of these registries is to and can be for certain localities is to sign up for what is called, quote/unquote, a special needs shelter.  And this is another solution that emergency managers think is a good one for disabled people in disasters and we call it segregation because they —— it is a way to kind of have a solution for when we all forgot to make sure that all of the shelters or some of the shelters were accessible to everyone —— all of the general shelters in disasters.  So oftentimes then, emergency managers will set up special needs shelters that can either mean it ensures that there is power at that shelter for somebody that may need to plug into an outlet or it could mean that there is medical support there for people that may have specific medical complexities or medical needs after a disaster.  Oftentimes, we find, though, that people with disabilities that may not have power dependency, maybe don't have specific you are the medical needs that need addressed at that moment are trying to access general shelters, general population shelters that everybody else is going to and if they are not accessible or sometimes they are accessible, but the managers of that shelter got instructions that all the disabled people go to a certain shelter somewhere else.  So oftentimes, we find disabled people are rerouted to the, quote, special needs shelters.  Oftentimes, they can find difficulties entering those special needs shelters if they have other family members with them.  There's oftentimes a limit of the capacity of the folks coming into those shelters, so we see families are then separated and oftentimes, a lot of institutionalization —— that's where that occurs during disasters is once there's a sense of recovery and shelters are starting to close, especially the special needs shelters, they are oftentimes a lack of housing, as we all mentioned earlier, that ongoing systemic advocacy need for housing certainly doesn't disappear during disasters and is disproportionately impacted.  When we don't have housing available, a lot of times we often find —— as we do in other times —— that people with disabilities are institutionalized.
	Anything my team would like to add?  I know Melissa, perhaps, would like to mention about a report from the National Council on Disability that we helped write on the institutionalization of people with disabilities in disasters
	»  Melissa:  Sure.  Thank you.  First of all, I want to highlight what Shaylin said and I want to say it in a couple of words really quickly.  Registries don't work.  People say we have a new and improved registry.  They don't work.  They are segregated and people with disabilities end up in bad situations because of special need centers and sometimes they end up being institutionalized because of special need shelters.  Reserving our freedom, which we did a few years ago —— preserving our freedom where we got to do a deep dive with what happens to people with disabilities, how do we get disproportionately institutionalized during disasters and emergencies, what happens is first of all nursing homes aren't required to keep the data set that they usually do.  We don't know why they go into institutions.  We send a Freedom of Information Act requests out to centers of medicare and medicaid and they said we don't know, we don't track these things, but we know we can demonstrate how people with disabilities are institutionalized more frequently after disasters.  Oh, and by the way, everyone in a nursing home has a disability.  You don't go to a nursing home because you are old, you go to a nursing home because the community isn't meeting your needs.  So when we talk about people living in nursing homes, we are talking about some people that are old and have disabilities and we are talking about some people that are younger and have disabilities because that is who ends up in nursing facilities, psychiatric institutions and other types of institutions.  There's a huge up tick in institutions and what happens when people get institutionalized?  They get sick, they die, they get isolated from their family member, all of these terrible things happened.
	We had to make the persuasive argument that bad things happen when we work on these documents, now we don't with COVID, it's sadly and abundantly clear can that people get sick and die in institutions.  That's always the case, but COVID really highlighted that.  So the reality is we end up in institutions and one of the things that happens and we read about this this summer where people go into institutions during disasters and get separate from families.  So right now, we have the pandemic and we also have concurrent disasters.  So we have hurricane like Ida, people end up in institutions and separated from families.  People end up dying in institutions from COVID.  So it's really horrific and ableism in the most sense of the word.  People are dying in institutions.  It's worst during the pandemic and still worse during concurrent disasters.  Thank you, Shaylin
	»  Shaylin:  Thank you, Melissa.  Certainly, I encourage folks to check out that report and we did add that to our resource list, as well, that's on the conference platform.  Use it as a resource, as an advocacy tool and certainly don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions around it
	»  German:  Earlier on the Q and A, Carlos Santos shared in the observation what has been a glaring gap in emergency preparedness response is people have been exposed with disabilities.  When disasters happen, all activities get impacted by it.  Public health goes hand in hand with emergency management.  We have seen that people with disabilities have been considered essentially extra, expendable.  COVID has killed over 725 thousand people in the United States.  98% of them have had co—morbidities.  In other words, disabilities.  At least 20% of people that have died have been in nursing homes, in congregate care settings.  For lifetimes, people with disabilities have been advocating against nursing homes, calling out the dangerous situations that they have been in.  Now there has been demonstrating the lack of preparedness in these facilities.  A few weeks ago, CNN medical contributor Sandra said we can look at nursing homes as the example of what will happen in the large community in relevance to COVID.  As Melissa well put it, we are the canary in the mine.
	When earlier we shared that people with disabilities die or are injured 2 to 4 times more people with disabilities during a disaster.  We have known this in hindsight.  This data comes specifically from following the 2011 earthquake in Japan.  The data was collected and this is our impact.  This is our lives.  Emergency preparedness, public health, the issues around mitigation, recognizing the gaps and being long standing have fallen through the cracks.  At the end —— towards the end of our presentation, we will share some federal bills that we mentioned earlier, the registry for disasters and DRMA which will help alleviate these gaps, but certainly, we need to, as we know with infrastructure, we have people with disabilities incorporated from the build up —— from the foundation up —— Other wise, we ended up being segregated and marginalized
	»  Shaylin:  Next slide, please, Priya.  So now —— oh.  No worries.  Now, we want to talk about the roles that Centers For independent living and statewide independent living do in disasters.  So I want to highlight that CILs coservices are vital during response.  This is one take away that you all have and empowers you in your community to view CIL and SILCs as responders when disaster strike.  When you are providing your information and referral resources, certainly at any time but especially during disasters for people with disabilities in your communities is a vital resource and is a first response activity.  The peer support that you provide in times of crisis, especially during this COVID public health emergency is vital for our communities and the ongoing education and advocacy that we all do individually with individuals and systemically for systems advocacy is more important now than ever and certainly especially during disasters and emergencies, as we've spoken upon the disproportionate impacts, the roles that you all play in your communities is very important and is why it's so needed for CILs and SILCs to be involved and playing a key role in these response activities and being at these tables.
	Next slide, please.  In an early advocacy result to that end of ongoing advocacy, not only locally but nationwide, we at the partnership have been holding a daily COVID—19 disability rights call each and everyday since February 28th of 2020.  When I say each and everyday, I truly do mean it.  Weekends, holidays, birthday, all of the days of the week, we have been meeting since February 28th of last year.  Soon, we will be upon two years meeting everyday.  And specifically, on the rights and needs of people with disabilities during this public health emergency, systemic solutions and advocacy tools and resources and peer support for one another and that call is each and everyday at 6:00 p.m. eastern time and certainly we have information for folks to join us on those calls if you are interested when you can and are able to.  From these calls, we've done a number of advocacy related documents and tools and put out many resources for organizations, centers for independent living, and one of the main things we saw early on throughout the pandemic was the need for centers for independent living to be identified and recognized as essential services and workers during the COVID—19 pandemic.  If we all remember back in the beginning or towards the beginning of 2020, there was a —— when we were all facing what we called lock downs, shut downs, whatever they may have been called in your area, and that only essential workers were able to sort of move throughout the community and go out and certainly we saw that CIL are vital as we mentioned previously.  You all continued to provide core services throughout disasters and it doesn't stop and the need for CILs to be recognized as essential workers and services during the pandemic was successful in many communities throughout the nation.  Next slide, please.
	And some good and promising practices that we have heard from folks across the nation.  CIL response during the pandemic.  One thing that German mentioned earlier on is that this is a nationwide federally declared disaster.  This is something effecting all of us around the nation.  As we are speaking about United States focus, the —— the work that we all do certainly is ramped up and has been throughout the pandemic and some examples that we've seen of CIL's response during the pandemic is being a local information and resource hub —— just being there for the community and maybe a lot of centers for independent living have seen new people with disabilities contact them because they are looking for resources near them.  So being that resource hub and that point for information and reliable information has been so vital for centers for independent living in different communities.
	Being a mask and sanitation Distribution site or having those resources, being able to mail those out.  We've seen centers for independent living do many different ways of getting those types of resources, masks and sanitation supplies out to our communities during this disaster where, many times, we're seeing that people with disabilities fall through those cracks of getting that personal protective equipment, as we all know that PPE, and also the need for masks for people that are deaf or hard of hearing being able to have a transparent mask and providing the solutions and bringing up these ideas to our emergency managers.  This is one of the key roles that CILs play during the pandemic.
	We have also seen CILs be food banks for their communities and for people with disabilities to come and access food and in partnership with food banks in their communities.  We've seen CILs become a COVID—19 Distribution site for at—home tests for COVID—19.  Some centers for independent living are requiring testing kits from their public health officials or emergency managers locally, and then being able to distribute those at—home tests for free to their community, people with disabilities who maybe do not have access to go to a testing site, perhaps just the need to have one of those at—home tests available at home with the influx of personal attendant care, workers coming in and out of people's homes and wanting to make sure that folks have access to rapid testing available if symptoms arise, and we've seen that be a really great resource for folks, especially as the access to testing sites has become a bit different over the course of the pandemic now that the vaccination sites are in place.
	»  German:  Many of these efforts have been in collaboration with the local public health agency and if need be, the emergency management agency.  So it is critical that we have not yet to engage them and we need support in that and you can certainly reach out to us.  Over the —— Shaylin and I, we first got engaged and dove head first into inclusive emergency management following hurricane Maria, as we were deployed to Puerto Rico and saw firsthand the large gap and the need for people in independent living were not essential critical workers.  With the —— as it were, a fire crossing through nursing homes early in the years, we saw in last year, we began advocating for FEMA to support centers for independent living in providing emergency relocation services.  FEMA has a guidance of public —— public policy program guide —— and they are —— there are a number of eligible private non—profits that FEMA then supports economically in reimbursement for a number of services.  Through last year, through the summer, with the support of the National Council on Disability, we had round tables where FEMA was engaged and addendum was created where personal assistant services and centers for independent living can be an eligible private non—profit.  We have been supporting roads to freedom.  A couple of months ago a yearlong and yesterday some of you saw a presentation, now, a center for independent living has been recognized and obligated funds for emergency nursing home relocation during a disaster.  It is an example that we want and needed to propagate as far as and wide as possible
	»  Shaylin:  And with that, I do want to ask everyone that is with us, if you don't mind sharing with us any additions to this list that you may have done as response work during the pandemic.  Please feel free to add your work in the chat or in the Q and A.  We would love to hear what else has been going on out there in the community to assist people with disabilities during the public health emergencies.  Love to hear other examples, as well.
	But let's —— in the interest of time, let's move to the next slide, please.  So as we mentioned earlier, some of our support as the partnership for inclusive disaster strategies to centers for independent living during this public health emergency and certainly throughout every disaster that occurs in our localities, we always reach out to the centers to independent living in the impacted areas and surrounded areas to touch base and see how we can support, but I also want to make sure that folks are aware of our disability and disaster hotline and I apologize, the number is not on the screen, but it is in the resource list that is on the platform —— the conference platform that you guys can check out, also on our website disasterstrategies.org.  It's for people with disabilities, organizations, allies needing assistance or support for disability and disaster related needs in times of —— or during and after disasters and emergencies and we act as a resource connection hub for people to connect with resources closest to them by calling our hotline and we also work with many partners across the nation, especially centers for independent living outside of the impacted areas that are able to assist us in addressing the hotline calls that come in and making sure that folks are getting the resources they need right when they need them.  Certainly do please reach out to us if you are interested in supporting our hotline in any way.  We always welcome partners to help us continue to spread that word and also make sure that we're addressing those needs.
	As I mentioned earlier, our daily COVID—19 disability rights calls each and everyday at 6:00 p.m. eastern time and we also hold a weekly national stakeholder call at —— on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. eastern time.  Folks, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, our information and contact information is included so you should all have it and we really hope folks reach out to us.  We also provide technical assistance for centers for independent living, organizations in supporting people with disabilities during disasters and we provide a number of community resilience initiatives, one being an initiative specific to COVID—19 pandemic and emergency management and people with disabilities and the centers for independent living that serve them.  But also, and I will call on Melissa to elaborate more on our gap analysis and continuity of operations plans and our other services that we provide.
	»  Melissa:  Thank you, Shaylin.  What we do, our gap analysis and continuity operations plans, we look at your center and look at the emergency plan.  One of the centers need to be able to function during emergency and disasters, including COVID, but also concurrent disasters and, hopefully, the pandemic will be curved at some point so there will be non—concurrent disasters that aren't the pandemic.  So we go in and do an interview with the center —— with the center staff, with their IT people, sometimes with their financial people, maybe a board member is interested and we talk about how well is your center set up to protect the lives of its staff and consumers in the building and members of the public in the building or people that it is serving during emergencies and disasters.  We look at those things and provide a gap analysis.  Here's the gap, here's our recommendation.  It's not coming from a "you're bad" and no one gets 100%.  Everyone has gaps, that's okay.
	Continuity of operations, we focus on how can your center continue to operate during disasters.  What are your work at home policies?  How do we do those things?  A year and a half later, we are looking at a slightly different lens, given that people are somewhat back to the office or maybe not fully back to the office, how can you do this smoothly?  How can you do this and still comply with your obligations under laws like HIPAA.  We don't do a HIPAA analysis but we mention things like that, we bring that to the forefront.  Those are some of the things we look at in the gap analysis
	The trainings, we have an initiative where we have a community access initiative during disasters initiative —— I am giving the name wrong —— and we have a six module series that has everything from emergency management basics, how to provide —— how CILs can continue to provide services during the pandemic like you are doing but how you can do it more and better because the pandemic keeps evolving and changing, as we learn more, the science is progressing and all the things are happening.  So how you can do those things.  How centers can help out with the vaccination process.  We look at all of those kinds of factors and I think those are all really important things for centers to know.  We have a module on what's the hard truth the centers need to know, things like registries don't work, institutionalization is a thing.  We go on at length about all of those things.  We do conferences.  Right now, we are scheduling a conference that's going to be in the first week of November at Delaware.  We did one at Washington state and we pulled the community together depending upon your objectives and initiatives around emergency response during disasters.
	»  Shaylin:  Thank you, Melissa.  Let's go to the next slide, please.
	»  Priya:  As we are going to the next slide, I wanted to quickly read some answers from the chat from folks.  One says that their CIL does curb side home visits as a way to support their consumers and their CILs.  Another individual also says that we've done 72 hour kits and have preparedness classes, which is fantastic.  Definitely need to educate our community on emergency preparedness.  Carlos adds that their center was asked to set up a shower site for the homeless because the rec and community centers shut down.  Thank you all for your answers.
	»  German:  I know that an individual wrote around issues in the state and the long term need for housing and being kept in shelters.  In the last slide, we have our contact —— our email is directors at disaster strategies dot org.  Please reach out to us so we can share with federal partners and the community.
	In the last minute, we will quickly go over the real emergency access for aging and disability inclusion, REAADI.  In the Senate S.2658 and H.R. 4938 and DRMA S. 2646 and H.R. 4937.  Money follows the American in the disaster.  If you qualify for medicaid, health and LTSS, HCBS, your state will be funded 100% for two years after a disaster.  If you relocate to a different state or county, your services will follow you and HHS will support that new provider with all the services you had.  And REAADI will create 20 nationwide, based on the regions, training and technical assistance centers and research centers for people with disabilities and disasters, as well as incorporating or doing a TAO and a inspector's office assessment on the mismanagement of funds going back to hurricane Katrina with a lens on the gaps for people with disabilities.  There are much more and you can find more on both bills at REAADI.COM
	»  Shaylin:  We really encourage folks to let us know your questions.  I know that the folks at APRIL will send them to us if we didn't get to address them today and we will reply and they will be added.  I know that we are at the top of our time and we really appreciate everyone tuning in and certainly adding your contributions and feedback.  Please don't hesitate to reach out to us.  All of our contact information is here and available to you all and thank you all for joining us.  Please stay safe and don't hesitate to reach out.  Take care, everyone.  Thanks for joining.
	»  Mellie:  We sure appreciate you.  And thank you to our interpreting team and our CART operator.  See you later on in the conference.
	(End 11:00 a.m.)
	*This text is being provided in a rough draft format . Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings .*