Recovering from a disaster

Customer solutions
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“

I was really frustrated with all the paperwork and having to prove I needed help.

I told the case worker, 'I’ve already lost everything; haven’t I shown you enough to show you I’m deserving? Do you not trust what I’m saying?'

— Hurricane Survivor

After receiving funds from FEMA, a son and daughter start work to rebuild their father’s home damaged by Hurricane Maria. They are starting the process by salvaging what they can until contractors, who are in high demand, can begin building a stronger concrete home.

FEMA/K.C. Wilsey

Where we are

An increasing number of Americans face natural disasters each year, yet they often lack the support necessary to fully recover.

When a natural disaster hits, survivors face the painful task of putting the pieces of their lives back together. They must care for basic needs and keep businesses going while enduring stress and trauma. On top of this, people must manage multiple bureaucratic processes with competing guidance, a confusing and frustrating journey at a moment when people expect government to show up and help.

Ten years ago, FEMA managed an average of 108 disasters a year. Today, that number is 311 disasters a year.¹ More than 20M individuals and families survive a Federally recognized disaster every year.

¹ Source: FEMA

Challenge

How might we provide a less frustrating and more dignified recovery experience for disaster survivors?

Our approach

To start, we listened to people’s stories.

The Life Experience research team spoke with people nationwide about this moment in their lives and where the government process could have been simpler and more helpful. The listening sessions captured honest conversations about peoples' experiences, candid feedback on what could have worked better, and what really made a difference for them. Their stories have been combined and are represented here through illustrations. The quotes are real, but names have been changed.

Cristina

Nursing Assistant

Hurricane survivor

Mobile home owner

Jordan

Nonprofit administrator

Tornado survivor

Renter

Linda

Childcare Center Owner

Wildfire survivor

Home owner

Cristina

Nursing Assistant

Hurricane survivor

Mobile home owner

Surviving a disaster:

Cristina, her husband Carlos, and their two-year-old daughter, Sofia, are forced to evacuate their mobile home when they learn about a hurricane approaching the area. Once the storm passes, they return to find devastating damage and have no idea what to do next.

Navigating the assistance process: Cristina begins applying for government assistance to repair her home so that it is safe to live in. She is confused and overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork required by multiple government agencies and feels pained by having to repeatedly describe the storm’s damage and her family’s loss.

Rebuilding and coping with ongoing trauma: Cristina eventually receives some money to fix her home but it’s not enough. To make the necessary repairs, she and Carlos take out a loan that they don’t know how they will ever repay. The stress of their new debt and worry about future storms is exhausting.

“I just sort of remember sitting down and filling out a bunch of forms. [It was] confusing because we weren’t sure what the point of it was, we didn’t know what we were getting, but they told us to sign up for this stuff, so we did.”

Pain Point

Burdensome application process

Survivors apply for help and request services from multiple agencies and aid organizations—a repetitive, tiresome, and often re-traumatizing process that takes time and attention away from other recovery tasks.

Jordan

Nonprofit administrator

Tornado survivor

Renter

Surviving a disaster:

Jordan and his fiancé Mark survive their apartment building getting destroyed by a tornado but lose most of their possessions. It's confusing to tease out what his renter's insurance will and will not cover. Jordan is fearful for his future.

Searching for assistance: Jordan struggles to understand what assistance he is eligible for. He waits in a long line at a Disaster Recovery Center and is told to apply for certain assistance but later finds out he is ineligible because he is a renter, not a homeowner. By digging through lots of information online, he eventually figures out what makes sense for him to apply for.

Rebuilding and coping with ongoing trauma: Jordan and Mark eventually receive some assistance, but it doesn't cover their costs. This situation is especially tough because the only apartment they can find is more expensive than the one that was destroyed. With everything that has happened, they must put their plans for a wedding and dream of buying a home on hold.

“I [a renter] was told I had to apply for an SBA loan if we wanted to be reimbursed for lost property. FEMA told us we had to be denied by SBA first. When I called for help, I was told ‘We’re just customer service, we don’t really know.’”

Pain Point

Inconsistent information

Many survivors find government websites, printed materials, and interactions with agency field staff inconsistent or uncoordinated. The quality of recovery information varies depending on the staff person or communication channel that a survivor encounters.

Linda

Childcare Center Owner

Wildfire survivor

Home owner

Surviving a disaster:

Linda is forced to evacuate her home because a wildfire is sweeping her area. She grabs just a few necessities from her house before escaping. The fire destroys her neighborhood, including her home and business.

Navigating the assistance process: Linda is torn between trying to sort out her personal loss and rebuilding her business. She applies for FEMA assistance for her home and an SBA loan for her business even though she worries about going into debt for a business that will struggle in this area now.

Rebuilding and coping with ongoing trauma: Linda eventually receives assistance for her home but is denied an SBA loan because of her low credit score. She makes the difficult decision to close the childcare center and lay off her employees.

“One of the hard parts of being a business owner is that everyone is struggling from a personal perspective, especially your employees. They had no power, they had to go find food. It was a survival thing.”

Pain Point

Lack of business-specific support

Some survivors find there is a lack of guidance and support focused solely on small business owners. Many loan-focused options have inconsistent eligibility requirements, or are hard to understand.

The team conducted interviews in-person, virtually, in English, and in Spanish. Participants included people from twelve states and territories who have experienced hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires and represented various backgrounds—including low-income renters and home owners, parents, the elderly, new immigrants, veterans, and people with disabilities.

The team spoke with:

43 survivors
22 frontline staff
16 government / nonprofit staff

Discovery insights

Framing for collective thinking about customer pain points

How might we support survivors by minimizing the burden of navigating multiple applications?

How might we better design our information, interactions, and services for people who have endured a traumatic experience and may have ongoing stress?

How might we improve and coordinate our communications about the full range of Federal programs for the general public and small business owners alike?

Design Phase

Designing customer-centered solutions

Design phase pilot projects aim to build on discovery phase insights on priority customer pain points to tackle. Teams will develop and prototype solutions to measure what works. The design phase work will remain rooted in a human-centered approach, including customers in co-design and testing. The design phase will run through Fiscal Year 2023.

Collaborating agencies: DHS (FEMA), HHS (SAMHSA), HUD, SBA

Sources: Project Documentation

The project will develop standardized design guidelines to promote trauma-informed communications and interactions between agencies and disaster survivors. The work will start with collecting and assessing current communication resources, tools, and resources. The design work will involve prototyping and testing new templates and methods that promote a trauma-informed approach.

Project objectives

The project will help agency and front-line staff have the knowledge, skills, and support to take a trauma-informed approach when engaging disaster survivors. Ultimately, it will result in a more sensitive and responsive recovery experience for people impacted by disasters.

Target milestones in 2023 include:

Host Whole Community Advisory Sessions with disaster recovery stakeholders, including people with lived experience in surviving a disaster; these sessions will engage a diverse community about the project and surface their perspectives and buy-in
Assess tools and resources – including peer-to-peer approaches – that currently support trauma-informed knowledge-building and identify gaps the project can fill
Build and prototype draft Federal Disaster Design Guidelines and other trauma-informed tools with users to gauge their applicability and make changes according to user insights

Primary deliverables in 2023 include:

Interim Federal Disaster Trauma-Informed Communication Design Guidelines, including baseline template for integrated disaster overview on available assistance
First iteration of a tool to support staff capacity and training efforts

Measures of success

Key outcomes:

The trauma-informed care project will result in increased survivor comprehension and level of engagement with assistance programs.

Design phase project measures:

Increased numbers of participating agencies that agree to continue to adapt, and plan to adopt, design guidelines
Feedback from disaster survivors, including small business owners, on the degree that they feel supported and respected through their interactions with Federal agencies implementing design guidelines for in-person, online, and in written touchpoints
Improved experience measures such as trust and satisfaction in sample populations compared to the baseline in real-world tests of revised communications using the design guidelines

Collaborating agencies: DHS (FEMA), HUD, SBA, GSA

Sources: Project Documentation

The project will define and blueprint an end-to-end view of the effort required of disaster survivors and small business owners to apply for, maintain, and receive Federal disaster assistance benefits. The burden estimate provides a baseline measure to calculate the impact of improvement efforts. The project will also support government-wide CX efforts by piloting a burden baseline methodology/calculator.

Project objectives

The project will create a method for calculating end-to-end burden using a uniform baseline methodology to capture psychological, learning, and time costs. High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) and agencies can utilize the example and toolkit for their burden assessments and to measure improvements and cost savings.

Target milestones in 2023 include:

Collect program data from across agencies for core disaster assistance services
Conduct burden analysis through user research and quantitative analysis
Validate findings with stakeholders and subject matter experts
Build the end-to-end summary and burden calculator for receiving Federal disaster assistance

Primary deliverables in 2023 include:

End-to-end burden calculations and measures for Federal disaster assistance, with specific points of high burden for priority opportunities to tackle through integrated disaster assistance efforts and improvement of forms
Toolkit for HISPs, other Life Experience teams, and Federal agencies to conduct end-to-end burden assessments and baselines

Measures of success

Key outcomes:

Federal agencies and delivery partners involved in disaster recovery utilize the burden baseline toolkit for service improvements. HISPs, other Life Experience teams, or Federal agencies use the toolkit to understand customer experience burden baselines.

Design phase project measures:

The developed methodology generates an accurate and verified calculation of the customer experience
Federal teams tackling more integrated assistance experience and improvement of forms for assistance utilize the resulting calculation to pinpoint targeted improvements
Adoption of the methodology by other Life Experience and HISP teams to create a holistic estimation of burden

Collaborating agencies: DHS (FEMA), SBA, HUD, USDA, HHS

Sources: Project Documentation

This project aims to clarify and simplify the experience of applying for Federal disaster assistance programs. Currently, survivors must navigate and apply for each relief program separately. These processes can be confusing, and survivors are unclear about the different kinds of assistance they may be eligible for and how to apply; once they do, they must keep track of multiple processes and communication channels and often enter the same data multiple times.

Project objectives

The project will first work on FEMA’s Individual Assistance (IA) registration process and SBA’s disaster loan application. Improving how survivors begin FEMA’s application process and clarifying how FEMA and SBA offer direct assistance programs could reduce the burden of the initial application processes for survivors.

Target milestones in 2023 include:

Analyze data for FEMA’s IA individual assistance registration and SBA’s disaster loan program
Create a roadmap and methods of collaboration between FEMA and SBA, including a cross-team task force and a shared backlog of projects
Improve messaging around FEMA’s intake application and SBA’s loan program on the web, outbound communications, and call center scripts

Primary deliverables in 2023 include:

Updated relevant Computer Matching Agreements, which permit FEMA and SBA to share data (for example, to help ensure that applicants don’t receive duplicate benefits from the same disaster)
New disasterassistance.gov intake application for FEMA IA is available to disaster survivors
New disaster loan application on mySBA.gov is available to disaster survivors

Measures of success

Key outcomes:

The project’s success is defined by its ability to reduce customer navigation burden, minimize duplication, and effectively communicate steps to access relevant assistance provided by multiple Federal entities, which will enable more survivors to receive the aid they are eligible for and recover more quickly.

Design phase project measures (subject to change based on discovery findings):

Decrease application processing time by reducing redundant interactions with SBA and FEMA, such as repeated data entry. The team will use the burden calculation method and outputs from the burden estimate project, including a current state understanding of the cumulative burden disaster survivors face in applying for disaster aid from both SBA and FEMA
Increase in access (e.g., minimize drop-off at various points, time delays due to the need for additional documentation or incomplete applications), particularly among applicants from underserved communities
Improvements in customer experience measures such as the ease of applying for assistance, the efficiency of the application review, equity, transparency, and public trust

Project Documentation

Agency collaborators

General Services Administration (GSA)
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)
Small Business Administration (SBA)
Department of the Interior (DOI)
Department of Commerce (DOC)
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)