HEALTH & WELLNESS
Sustaining strength for crisis leadership and resilience
CHERIE CASTELLANO Cop2Cop
So instead of focusing on what is wrong in law enforcement, this year at Cop 2 Cop we are looking at what is strong in law enforcement, and we are building on that foundation of strength.
Based on a variety of meetings and discussions with the NJ State PBA, state and federal leaders, and the NJ Chiefs Association and the IACP, our work at Cop 2 Cop is focused on developing partnerships to renew strength in all of you moving forward. We know that approximately 80 percent of our callers are not in crisis; in fact, they have challenges that we all share.
Our Cop 2 Cop peer counseling offers a perfect coping mechanism to discuss the challenges of everyday life and regain a new perspective to improve the quality of life. Half of all calls do not require formal treatment. Our retired cops are trained in the national best practice model of“ reciprocal peer support,” which involves connections, information gathering and risk assessment, care management, and resilience building with an average of 12 calls during a six-month time period— then back to“ normal,” whatever that means for you.
At Cop 2 Cop, we can do prevention work with trainings like Question, Persuade, and Refer( QPR) as a buddy-to-buddy system. However, our training efforts have already been offered to 11,000 officers, and they want something new! We also know that the Cop 2 Cop crisis response unit is doing 100 crisis response debriefings a year. That Cop 2 Cop“ postvention” effort links cops to peer counseling and referrals after the debriefings, so it all is working seamlessly. But we can’ t stop the crisis, trauma and vicarious exposure to trauma that cops in New Jersey face every minute of every day.
So thanks to President Pat Colligan for requesting that we explore building resilience for members of the NJSPBA. Thanks to Gerald McAleer, Middlesex County Prosecutor’ s Office Chief, for requesting that we design a course for his“ high-risk” officers in units like sex crimes and homicide. Using focus groups and a new framework for resilience, we are moving in the right direction.
In a recent high-level leadership meeting at which I was presenting a Cop 2 Cop briefing, a chief said in my introduction that all the leaders in the room had to do more to address the psychological well-being of those they lead. After 20 years of working in the field of police psychological services, that introduction was a sign of something new.
The military has devoted significant resources to resilience building coursework for its service members. Now experts at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a skillset that is being adapted from the military culture to the law enforcement culture, and we are actively working on a pilot project.
Chief McAleer requested that a Cop 2 Cop Resilience Course be developed as a pilot for his officers involved in“ high-risk” work in terms of trauma exposure, and we will launch the“ Sustaining Resilience” course in November. We began with a focus group to explore what really happens to officers exposed to trauma on a regular basis and what realistically may help. I met with two retired cops with tons of experience in units with trauma exposure and a group of officers from the Middlesex County Prosecutors Office to design the course curriculum, and we will deliver the course and evaluate it next month.
In addition, President Colligan and the State PBA will continue to create an infrastructure that supports members with psychological on-site service through Dr. Gene Stefanelli, as well as training for delegates in Cop 2 Cop QPR techniques and crisis response to ensure that police psychological prevention, intervention and postvention are available when needed. Our Cop 2 Cop team will brief the NJSPBA Executive Committee on trends in the state related to calls for peer support, training, suicides and crisis debriefing support in an attempt to partner with leadership to offer more.
Here’ s a glance at the UPENN Resilience Skillset upon which we based our Cop 2 Cop pilot project, with simple definitions as an overview. These six pillars of resilience are addressed in our new course, with activities and ideas to help enhance these traits in cops in New Jersey.
• Self-awareness. The ability to pay attention to your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physiological reactions. Conscious knowledge of one’ s own character, feelings, motives and desires.
• Self-regulation. The ability to change one’ s thoughts, emotions, behaviors and physiology in the service of a desired outcome.
• Mental agility. The ability to look at situations from multiple perspectives and to think creatively and flexibly.
• Strength of character. The ability to use one’ s top strengths to engage authentically, overcome challenges and create a life aligned with one’ s values.
• Connection. The ability to build and maintain strong, trusting relationships.
• Optimism. The ability to notice and expect the positive, to focus on what you can control, and to take purposeful action.
Following a crisis, law enforcement leaders must assess:
• What are my people going through? What is my organization going through? What does this mean? What can I do? Leadership during times of stress and crisis begins with understanding how stress impacts the people you lead.
• The“ psychosocial impact of trauma” with each survivor’ s disaster is unique. Each survivor is unique, and they will have individual responses in areas such as physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, spiritual and life-view.
• With“ life-view and spiritual” reactions to trauma, one is coming to terms with one’ s own mortality. Questioning one’ s religious beliefs and faith practice. Questioning whom / what can I trust? As a result, spiritual beliefs may
76 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ NOVEMBER 2017