Introduction to Emotional and Spiritual Care (ESC) is designed to train all Salvation Army disaster workers with the basic skills necessary to offer emotional and spiritual care, as needed, to disaster survivors and first responders. Participants will explore how their cultural and religious practices may influence their responses to disaster survivors and first responders who have different cultural and religious beliefs. Participants will also review the most current research regarding the spiritual climate in the United States and will reflect on how to provide spiritual care for those individuals with different beliefs. Finally participants will be introduced to three approaches for offering emotional and spiritual care during a disaster: ministry of presence, ministry of listening, and the ministry of caring. Each approach is similar and yet different and take into account the comfort level of disaster workers as well as the needs of survivors and first responders. .

This course is designed to introduce participants to the Operations section as it pertains to the Incident Command and will prepare participants to serve in a leadership role within the Operations section on an Incident Management Team. It will cover the role and responsibilities of the Operations Chief, provide an overview of the subordinate positions found within the Operations section and will look at how service delivery – from food service to disaster social services to bulk distribution -- is set-up, managed, coordinated, and demobilized through the Operations section. .

This course provides a general orientation to the Incident Command System (ICS), an organizational management tool used by The Salvation Army and many other disaster relief agencies, to command, control, and coordinate emergency operations. The course covers the nine core ICS functions and management principles. Participants will be asked to apply what they have learned, using ICS to coordinate a response operation to an expanding disaster incident and in a culminating table-top exercise. ICS is a prerequisite for all advanced level Salvation Army disaster training..