 Mary Ellen Mendel, welcome. We're so glad to have you. Thank you talking about how You're keeping people informed in services social services Delivered to people but tell me first. How is the remote work? Going is that a did you have to work out some kinks? No, actually, you know, we practice this and drill and exercise with the Department of Health and emergency management all through the year not quite with this scenario, but So we're we've got a continuity of operations plan. Everybody's working from home. They we all have laptops Some folks brought their little cube headphones headsets home Two monitors. So we're we're just we've done this before during bad snowstorms or bad flooding, so It's kind of nice to not have any kinks How how big is the network of people that you're working with directly? In inside 211 Yeah Yep for so for 211. We've got five full-time staff working From 8 a.m. till midnight answering calls We have three full-time staff who are really Our information getters and they're going out and updating our database on the services and programs that we have in there Because a lot of things are changing. This is evolving very quickly, as you know And we're trying to keep up with at least the service providers in our database And then we're also keeping track of some other More community grass rootsy type things that are going on, but that's a lot more challenging to keep up with Our call volumes Increased we're doing anywhere from two to three hundred calls a day. That's that's pretty high for us It's usually around a hundred. So it's at least two to three times higher But you know We use this slack program. I don't know if you're familiar with it So we're all talking to each other and we're having trying to have some fun and be light But yes, we are There's many many demands on our on our time in our service. Do you have a water cooler channel on your slack set up? it's not called water cooler we just do we do but we do have a place where we can go for just random conversation and Along with all the other you know a COVID-19 a contact center. We've got a bunch of them. So but it's fun Yeah, we found slack to be quite efficient It is yeah, and it tracks the conversations So, you know, you can you can keep keep it sorted out exactly and it's fun I mean people are having fun with it, you know, so that's good. So how is this compare with Irene? What kind of questions are you getting from folks? We're we're getting questions Mostly right now about testing, but it's been all all around. I mean we've gotten questions about wearing a mask. We've got questions about I make granola. How do I know if it's safe to sell to people? How do I let how do I ensure them? It's safe if we go into the grocery store What should we be doing should be wearing gloves and using cloth bags or paperback? You know So there's a lot of questions and then of course the questions that we feel like we can answer Which are the ones that are vetted through the Department of Health, so we're getting a lot of calls around who can be tested I want to be tested. Why can't I be tested? Where can I be tested? So a lot of testing calls And we're gonna see this You know surge up as things go on and so on the today's the 23rd of March I believe it's I kind of lose time when you're working seven seven days a week But what is the what is the advice that you're giving to folks on testing? What's the current status? Well, the current status is you know, it's just it's funny because every day feels like Groundhog Day doesn't it you get up You sit in front and you do this all over again For testing not everybody's going to be tested and you can't be tested unless you have some sort of Symptom of the virus and then if that's the case you need to call your primary care physician If you don't have a primary care physician, you can call 211 and we can recommend one of the local clinics Or you can also get in touch with your insurance company if you're insured and they sometimes have a Portal with doctors who are accepting patients. So you can't get tested unless you have a referral from a doctor and and that's how we're You know, that's how we're how we're encouraging people are not encouraging people. That's how we're letting people know how they can go ahead and Find out more and it's basically has to be through your primary care provider now 211 is a statewide service So you're fielding calls from all over We are fielding calls from all over the state around COVID-19. We're also because We have some vulnerable vulnerable adults and children in our in our state. We're also Doing a lot of housing emergency housing. It's been the state has Developed some guidance on folks who might be what they call hyper Vulnerable so if they're over the age of 60, certainly if they're experiencing homelessness And where we were housing a couple weeks ago, we were asked to take people people came out of shelters and went into motels Who might have been hyper vulnerable? And now we're just seeing a real relaxation on rules for Emergency housing and we're housing a lot of people statewide. So I as you may know when the weather gets cold The state advises of an adverse weather condition and that relaxes some of the rules for for obtaining emergency housing This is even more relaxed than that. So Trying to get people You know housed and safe So just talk about how that works from 211's perspective people contact you or who are you working with just how what's that workflow? No, we have the well, certainly. This is a program of the state of Vermont the economic benefits services Economic services division. I'm sorry and we Take on those calls after hours for economic services. So at 430 every day people call us and are looking for Temporary housing usually in a motel at this point We're not even referring to shelters because we don't want to put new people in shelters when they're trying to Social distance and keep that 15-day period But folks call 211 if they're eligible and they're eligible in a few different ways It could be that they're vulnerable Catastrophic eligibility if their house burnt down for an example if they lost a family member recently for an example And then there's a point system that we use to to make to see if people fit into that category And then we could provisionally house them for a night up to one night up to four if it happens Somebody calls on a Friday night. We're gonna house them Friday Saturday Sunday until they can get to the office on Monday And now there is no office At least it's not staffed. So people are having to call do all this by phone now and call the benefit services Center For housing during the day But when it's after 430 and on weekends and holidays 211 is taking that on and has been for many years So we'll get a hotel room for somebody will call the hotel will get the reservation We'll get back to the person let them know where they're gonna be staying How long they're gonna be staying and then they do need to go into economic services in the next business day Of course in this case, they'll be calling and then there's a little bit of a twist on that when the weather drops below 20 degrees Or 32 with the 50% chance precipitation In some places tonight Then they would be able to it's called adverse weather conditions And we would be able to house them for as long as the duration of the the storm or the weather event so you're talking about some of relaxation of Criteria and also how to get things done. Yeah, and and so my main question is do you see a longer term? Change do you do you does this kind of make you think that things might be working differently? Yeah, we're definitely working. I hope we see some change. I think there's some really neat, you know communication going on people are Really at least my experience has been they're communicating really well with each other Doing a lot of follow-up. I mean everybody is pulled in different directions But we're all in this together as you've probably heard the governor say many times We're all in this together and I feel like there might be some changes in Systems after this is done But it's hard to say exactly what that would be Yeah, it's hard. I mean I imagine You've been you've had systems in place It sounds like you had the continuity of operations ready to go so that was thought through so you weren't inventing like a lot of Organizations were last week how to do business. Yes, absolutely And that's the thing. That's the key. You have to practice this this stuff. It just doesn't come naturally to everybody And again, we've just this is what we do. We've been doing this for a long time now Some of the things that we're noticing You know as far as our data goes as again, we're seeing a big increase in the housing But we're also seeing an increase in people looking for food resources You know with schools closed I believe there's some some communities that are trying to get together and make sure that those meals are getting out to students While they're not in school, but we're seeing a big increase in people looking for food resources So, you know, will something come out of that? Hopefully there'll be some sort of a contingency plan if this happens again at schools So that the food can get out to the community because it is their responsibility to continue to feed the children And what are you you mentioned there are some communities coming up with the solutions on the fly? Are there any in particular? Where do you refer people? Well, we're not referring people to communities and some of the grassroots Stuff we're trying to keep track of it, but it's very very difficult to keep track of that and keep our database up to date So we focused as a priority on Getting the COVID updated COVID-19 frequently asked questions from the Department of Health So we can field these calls and also updating the resources in our database. I don't have any examples to give to you right now There's there's many of them that are going around in the community I know the loyal I guess I do have an example the loyal County for example is has a team of people who are volunteering to run errands and pick things up for people and you know drop things off prescriptions or food and That's all you know, they wanted to use 211 for that to call But I felt like that could get really dropped, you know lost in the shuffle But they're doing that they're the loyal County communities got a team of volunteers reaching out to people That's just one example of many that are going on in the in the state around the state So how does this compare with Hurricane Irene? It's a lot a lot of the it's a lot the same in the sense that it's rush rush rush Kind of high anxiety in some circumstances a lot of debriefing a lot of phone conference calls With emergency management and Department of Health and others, but it's not the volume has not quite hit what it did with Irene We received the one day in during Irene post Irene in one day. We had 9,000 calls We've never seen that before and I hope we don't see it again but That's you know Irene it was different because when it's flooding obviously nobody goes anywhere if it's just a snowstorm people Some most people stay home But this is so like nothing we've ever really had to do before right and they call it social distancing But it's more like physical distancing, you know, I mean, it's one thing for us to do this and I love it I think it's great our technology has really, you know enabled us to To have these conversations and to see other people and talk to other people But we really we're a lot of us need that physical to you know to be close to people So in that case, I think it's the same as Irene because people were definitely Distanced from each other and their communities and in some cases the rest of the state volumes not as high yet Information flow is just as challenging. It's coming from everywhere So it's important that we vet everything that we give out to the public So I imagine you're working a lot To hours every day. Yes. Have you had any downtime? I made myself yesterday at three o'clock I shut off the computer and the cell phone and I just stayed off of it for a few hours I haven't had that much, but I'm trying I'd start me starting to get to me So I'm I also by the end of the day Looking at this computer. I get a wicked headache. So I have to now start shutting myself off Yeah, I don't blame you. You know, they have those glasses you can use I have the blue filter I I had a concussion a couple years ago and it rears its ugly head In times like this when I'm too focused on the screen and doing a lot of talking to that usually does it too, but I'm getting there I can imagine. Yeah, it's just making me take a little bit of a break. So Well, thank you Is there anything you think folks you'd like folks to know about two one one and your services? Well, you know, I want folks to know that we're there. We are 24 7365. We're back We lost that for a little while, but we are back and it is a very busy time We are fielding calls for the whole state in very different Areas whether it be housing or food resources or COVID information Please just leave a message if you don't get through to a person and we will make sure to call you back Well, Mary, that's the biggest thing Mary Ellen, you are on the frontline of the United Way service delivery, which is a huge social safety net for our state Mm-hmm, and that's really important and thank you so much for this update And if you feel at any point you want to provide some other update just let us know I will do that and you reach out to thank you so much for doing this. Lauren Glenn. I really appreciate it It's great to see you you too. Hang in there