This week the Southern New England Conference received a request from MEMA (the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency) asking for input from ALL Massachusetts Churches on 2 questions:

• Are you providing food or meals or vital services programs in your community?
• Do you have spiritual care individuals (trained in spiritual care during times of disasters) who could be available to the general public?
  In this moment the folks who are contacting MEMA and looking for spiritual care often need a higher level of training, particularly in the areas of mental health diagnostics, crisis intervention, and trauma remediation. If you don’t have training and credentials in these it might be wise to not offer your services. 

MEMA is mapping resources across the state of Massachusetts so they can provide coordinated resourcing for the most challenged and vulnerable members of our communities. They are looking to have better resource information to respond to the many calls that come in through their help lines, both phone and online. 

PLEASE have ONE clergy or other designated leader from your congregation fill out the form linked below.

MEMA states that they are "looking to identify feeding programs, 12-step meetings, parking lots, nursery facilities, and potential volunteers for spiritual caregiving, both in person and remotely. If your church has multiple locations, we ask that you fill out a survey for each location. This will ensure that locations will appear within the community that they serve."

Please fill out this form only once: https://massgov.formstack.com/forms/houses_of_worship_questions
 
Conference staff have checked with Connecticut and Rhode Island Emergency Management Agencies and they are not currently conducting such surveys.  However, their websites have more information about the resources they are providing.