TPC-Journal-V5-Issue4

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 4 433 Implications for Counselors and Counselor Educators in New Orleans One of the facts that counselors learned from Hurricane Katrina is that the demographics of a population will likely change after a disaster (Arendt & Alesch, 2014). Counselors will need to shift from serving one population to another, and will be required to learn new skills. Following a disaster, administrators will need to provide continuing education for counselors so that they can learn new skills, and counselor educators will need to prepare graduate students for work in disaster environments. Changes in the median age of New Orleans citizens after the hurricane have resulted in an older population, fewer children and more people living alone, which have had a significant impact on counselors providing services in the city today. Counselors with little to no expertise in providing services for elderly, isolated clients have had to be educated on new skills. In fact, many counselors who previously worked with children are now counseling older adults with different needs. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, few schoolchildren had access to mental health counseling to the extent that they do in today’s charter schools. Counselor educators in New Orleans now prepare counselors who wish to work in schools for both the traditional role of school counselors in parochial or public schools and for the new role of school mental health counselors for those positions in agencies that contract to provide services in charter schools. Counselors in New Orleans served a population challenged by poverty prior to Hurricane Katrina and continue to provide services to people who are impoverished at a much higher rate than people living in many other areas of the United States. Counseling individuals living in poverty requires special skills in order to serve their needs (Ratts & Pedersen, 2014). As a result, universities in New Orleans are required to prepare their graduates to understand and serve clients of poverty. Moreover, a report issued in the fall of 2012 by The Data Center, an independent research organization in New Orleans, indicated that 37% of the people in New Orleans live in asset poverty , defined as not having enough funds to support a household for 3 months if the main source of income was lost (Shrinath et al., 2014). Asset poverty has particularly severe implications in New Orleans because evacuations from hurricanes are necessary every few years and require funds or credit. Counselors in New Orleans who provide services to poor clients must help their clients prepare for hurricane evacuation despite not having needed financial resources. This narrative is told countless times during each evacuation maneuver. My Story in Brief I am a counselor educator and was one of the counseling professionals in New Orleans who chose to relocate after Hurricane Katrina. While such decisions are complicated and are motivated by multiple factors, the primary concerns that led to my departure were that the university where I was working, like all entities in New Orleans, was unstable and experiencing severe financial stress, and I was caring for my elderly mother who needed regular medical attention that was not readily available in the city after the hurricane. I resigned from the university in New Orleans in May 2006, almost a year after the hurricane, and relocated to another state to teach in a counselor education program. I had the opportunity to return to New Orleans eight years later and assumed my current position as a counselor education professor in 2014. When I left New Orleans in 2006, I was sad to be leaving my colleagues and friends, quite apprehensive about my professional future, financially vulnerable, and concerned about health care for my family members as well as myself. When I returned eight years