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In March 2020, the State of Louisiana opened an alternative care site at the New Orleans Convention Center, known as the Medical Monitoring Station (MMS). The facility was designed, constructed, and staffed to serve a population with basic medical needs as they recovered from COVID-19. As the MMS prepared to open, local hospitals indicated a greater need for assistance with patients requiring a higher acuity of care and populations unable to be discharged due to infection risks. In response to this, the capabilities of the facility were altered to accommodate primarily elderly patients, with significant comorbidities, requiring extensive care. This manuscript presents the demographics of the first 250 patients seen at the MMS, and describes the most critical policies/protocols, interventions, and resources that proved successful in adjusting to effectively serve its population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents some recent developments in the evaluation of crime prevention and control programs, including the increased use of process evaluation models. Describes the nature, methods, and advantages of the idiographic (or single subject) model as used in social work. (JAC)

Introduction: In August 2021, Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana as a near-category five storm, bringing massive devastation to the region's healthcare infrastructure. In its aftermath, extreme heat coincided with record COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state, leaving minimal healthcare surge capacity remaining and medically vulnerable populations unprotected. Meanwhile, sparse pre-storm evacuations exposed prominent gaps in existing medical response plans designed to serve high-risk groups. Subsequently, Louisiana rapidly established a 250-bed alternative care site (ACS) within hard-hit New Orleans. This presentation highlights key considerations in the operation of the site and discusses which patient populations are most in need of medical support following tropical weather events. Method: The findings of this discussion are the result of after-action reviews, brief literature reviews, and the experiences of responders during Hurricane Ida. The presentation also draws on retrospective patient chart reviews from Louisiana's prior alternative care sites. Results: Following Hurricane Ida, a post-storm alternative care site was rapidly established in New Orleans in partnership with a US Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT). Operationalized in less than 72-hours, this site provided inpatient care to displaced persons with major chronic medical needs (e.g. home ventilators, hemodialysis, respiratory therapies), significant mobility impairment, wound care, and psychiatric illnesses. Incorporating Louisiana's experience with a COVID-19 alternative care site, this facility far-exceeded the typical scope of medical shelters, simultaneously lessening medical surge on already-overburdened hospitals and meeting post-storm needs in the region. Conclusion: Following extreme weather events in metropolitan areas, traumatic injuries and acute illness comprise a small proportion of the medical needs after the event. Accordingly, disaster medical responses must prepare to treat large numbers of chronic illness exacerbations that result from a loss of access to primary care, home health support, and auxiliary services. This approach efficiently leverages resources into lifesaving interventions and protects healthcare systems during times of high stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time has come for an acceleration in the rate of professional development in the specialization of social group work. This calls, for a full and frank recognition in practice as well as in theory, that direct service to clients is the primary function of the group worker, as it is of the caseworker, and that therefore the quality of this service must be considerably improved. Improving the quality of direct service to clients would advance significantly the stage of professional development of social group work. It is further suggested that such an improvement in quality of service can be achieved in part by converting group work from a method guided largely by intuition into one which is methodologically sound, that is, which conforms to the principles of orderly procedure. Although specific goals often guide group work practice, they are frequently implicit, hence incommunicable to other practitioners. As a consequence no widely accepted specific goals exist in group work. This situation probably results from the fact that group work goals generally derive from empirical experience and are not related to tested theory.

This article has described an attempt made, in the context of a wider study, to devise a toot for assessing parent-child relationship patterns in a manner that will provide clear blueprints for remedial action. The related concepts of crisis situation and acute situational disorder were applied to the delinquency situation, and an effort was made to specify some of the coping mechanisms parents of court delinquents must use in order to help prevent the acute disorder brought on by the court experience from becoming chronic. It was postulated that, by focusing on how the parents responded to the delinquent act, it should be possible to make a family diagnosis that could lead directly to a constructive, and frequently short-term, treatment plan for the family. The tool-building process was set up as a collaborative effort between researcher and practitioners to exploit to the full the clinical knowledge of the social work team in devising the measurement instrument, not merely in using it. The instrument that was devised is designed to tap the parents' assessment of the court crisis and their actions to prevent recurrences. Its function is to assess, within selected areas, the degree to which parental coping mechanisms are adaptive or maladaptive for purposes of delinquency control. Adaptive and maladaptive coping mechanisms were conceptually and operationally defined. In this presentation, the data-gathering, rating, and assessment processes have been described in some detail, the formula for deriving assessments of family coping pat- terns has been presented, and the ratability of the instrument and its use by personnel not clinically trained have been discussed. The methodological procedures utilized to refine and standardize the instrument have been reviewed, and evidence concerning its reliability and validity presented. In conclusion, it has been asserted that parental coping mechanisms in this crisis situation appear, in general, to reflect stable and persisting aspects of family structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]