Integrating Juvenile Support & Response Services

Dec. 27, 2016
Our community is lucky. We have our police, but we also have a medic/counselor crisis intervention team attached to public safety AND a child/adolescent crisis response team. Due to these partnerships, we are able to provide positive, therapeutic...

Recently a young lady had a melt-down on her school bus ride home. With a lengthy trauma history, this 11 year-old receives numerous mental health services and had just transitioned from residential care to therapeutic foster care. Every day, she practiced her new skills in the community with a dedicated family. Like most things, her continued healing took time and on this particular day, she struggled with using her coping skills and making good choices. She made several threats to run away and the bus driver and aide felt unable to keep her safe. They followed protocol stopping the bus and calling for police assistance.

When the police arrived on the scene, the young lady was off the bus but continued to refuse to be safe. Her foster mother arrived but was unable to get her to change behavioral direction and move on from this interaction. At this point, the officers requested a resource available in our community; they called for the crisis intervention team. Staffed with a medic and a counselor, this unique model assists public safety and quickly came to help. This team allows officers to find other solutions rather than strictly law enforcement ones. The team arrived to the young lady still standing on the sidewalk with an officer about fifteen feet away from her on either side, and they began working with the young lady, attempting to calm her and redirect her behavior. By this time, a third team had also been requested. The third team belonged to the area’s child and adolescent crisis response program. Two mental health professionals, specializing in children, from the agency the young lady received services from arrived on scene. Being familiar with the youth, they used their professional knowledge to utilize her treatment history to address the root of her behaviors and make a plan to end the situation positively. The first crisis intervention team assisted the second team and allowed the officers to feel confident the situation was under control and go back into service. In the end, the child deescalated and was able to go home without further incident.

Working together

This young lady is lucky to live in an area where dedicated professionals work together to meet all the gray areas in mental health, law enforcement and child welfare. Not every community is as lucky, but many do offer resources and partnerships that can work together to meet diverse missions. Often officers end up in situations where the options available to them, namely arrest, don’t make the most sense. But when patrol is faced with maintaining the peace and safety of both the individual and the community, often they are forced to utilize the only option available. In communities that offer programs like crisis response, they are given more options and able to work within a variety of solutions. They can keep their community safe while at the same time coming up with a plan that will actually be therapeutic. To truly utilize the partnerships within a community, professionals need to ask three questions.

What resources exist in my community?

Do you know what partner agencies exist within your community? Do you know what they do? Are you familiar with their mission statements and their parameters? These resources can be government, private and not-for-profits. If you have agencies focused on crisis intervention, de-escalation and stabilization, is there a way these teams can be used in partnership with patrol when needed? In our community, the medic/counselor model team fall under a local non-profit but are funded by public safety. They assist both the police department and the fire department. The crisis response program is run by three non-profit agencies and is funded by county mental health. Being familiar with what your community offers and spearheading the conversation to form partnerships can help offer appropriate services to the community. It also allows patrol to focus on law enforcement while allowing the mental health professionals to focus on mental health.  

How do they work together?

If you have partnership agencies, how do they work together? If you are looking to create partnerships, what would be the most advantageous vision for working together? Do the different agencies understand what the other agencies do? Do they meet frequently, possibly on a task force, to discuss common goals and work through any issues that might arise? Communication, like in most partnerships, is essential for these blended solutions to work well. If there are road blocks or historical animosities, how can these be solved? Working together with a common goal should be the main purpose of everyone involved. 

How can we work together more efficiently?

One of the things that needs to be addressed in any partnership is how to prevent overlap while at the same time allowing for each team to be utilized to the best of its abilities. In the situation with the young lady from the bus, the question was raised why so many people needed to be involved, especially in reference to two crisis teams. This question comes up often in this community due to the overlap of the two agencies. Having been part of the interaction, I witnessed three agencies, including the police with a goal of bringing a positive, safe solution to a child having a mental health crisis. The first team showed up in support of the child and the officers. When the second team showed up they were able to focus solely on the child and the first team supported them and allowed the officers to move on. Everyone had a purpose and due to the good work in partnership with each other, the interaction ended safety. Keep in mind that this also occurred on a city street in full view of the public. All the agencies communicating and working together was a positive representation of our partnerships and I guarantee the community noticed.

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