Originally Posted By: Am_Fear_Liath_Mor
From your experience though, how much of Fugate's common sense approach has filtered down through the organisation or is it just a case that some poor fellow (no doubt a Business and Emergency Management postgraduate degree holder wink ) was tasked with editing the FEMA management documentation that is already in place to replace the words 'Victim' and 'Special Needs' for political correctness etc.


FWIW, words matter, and one man's poison is another man's passion. Special needs connotes that folks who have disabilities have some sort of special need - where as if society provided an accommodation which is the law in the US, there would be no 'special need.' Special need, handicapped - it takes about an hour to do a search / replace for the new accepted and neutral term, "functional need". The fact is that folks who aid in disaster response need to respond to functional needs, section 508, ADA provisions etc, and this is a relatively new realization. But words matter, at least to those who get labeled 'special need.' No matter what the term used, we will just address real human needs in this instance. Same goes with the label 'victim' - I deal with folks affected by disasters every day, and very few are what I would consider to be victims of the disaster. Most have more spine than to be victimized. I don't care what FEMA wants to call them, I can't legitimately call them victims.