Family Services Police Go Team

Project :

The "Police Go Team" is a new emergency response program developed by Family Service, Inc., a non-profit 501 (c)(3) social service organization, in cooperation with the Providence police. The Police Go Team will allow us to expand our emergency services to provide immediate mental health and social service assistance to any Providence child, individual, or family who are primary or secondary victims of domestic violence or other violent crime, including those who are not our clients. Within the Providence service area, emphasis is on low-income, high-crime minority neighborhoods and children and adolescents.

The program will specifically impact victims by diminishing the immediate trauma and longer-term mental health problems experienced by victims of domestic violence or violent crime. It will also help victims, especially children, juveniles, and minorities, access the justice system as active partners. In addition, the Police Go Team will impact the community by helping to reduce overall levels of violence.

The Team, staffed by four experienced independently licensed or master's level Family Service clinicians, would provide immediate response to telephone calls from police officers on the scene of violent crime or domestic violence or abuse, a service not now available to them. Team responsibilities would rotate among team members who would receive supplemental pay for their participation.

The on-call clinician would provide the initial high quality mental health assessment, advice, counseling, and referral for longer term treatment for victims and those immediately impacted by crime such as family members and witnesses. This longer term treatment may then be provided at Family Service or at any of the more than 100 social service organizations with which Family Service is affiliated or has ongoing relations.

Based on the severity of the situation, the number of people affected, or the presence at the scene of children, additional team clinicians may be activated. At the crime location, the clinician(s) would work face-to-face with victims and others immediately affected by the crime. In addition to mental health counseling and referral, the clinician may need to arrange for emergency shelter, immediate safety, or basic needs through a victims' emergency fund. They may also travel to the hospital with the victim if needed. Clinicians are on-call 24/7 with responsibility for first response rotating among the team. Follow-Lip assistance for crime victim compensation benefits will be provided at Family Service by an intern or the intake office.

The Providence police in 2002 recorded that 928 children were either victims of violent crime or present during domestic violence serious enough to lead to an arrest. Among the 204 children who were direct victims of violent crime, 28% were identified as white; 24% black; 41 % Hispanic; and 7% Asian. The National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that children as young as 12 to 14 are as likely to be victims of violent crime as older children 15 to 17. A recent OJJDP (Office of JUVCilile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) national study by Shaffer and Riiback found that among minorities ages 1 1 to 1 7, victims had better than a 50-50 chance of becoming victims a second time within a year.

Also in 2002, 355 children witnessed domestic violence leading to arrest and another 369 children heard the incident without seeing it directly. Children in homes with domestic violence have at least a 30% risk of becoming victims of that violence. Some studies estimate this risk factor as high as 60%. In Providence, those estimates translate to between 217 and 434 children being at high risk of becoming victims of domestic violence.

The Police Go Team is an essential piece of an innovative national Child Development Community Policing (CD-CP) model developed by the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine and the New Haven police at the time Providence Police Chief Esserman was working as deputy chief in New Haven. As police chief, he introduced this model in Stamford, CT. Now, as chief in Providence, he approached Family Service about introducing this model in Providence. It has already been implemented in more than a dozen cities and is the first of only four models addressing youth victimization recommended in the National Juvenile Justice Action Plan.

Implementing the Police Go Team would be a first step toward implementing the full CD-CP model. Family Service and the Providence police had already begun working cooperatively on behalf of children in some Providence high schools with police referring children directly to Family Service for assistance. Family Service has also requested funding from the Rhode Island Foundation.

Based on our initial experience with receiving referrals from the Providence police and the experience gained in Stamford, we expect to serve 200 victims of crime the first year, primarily juveniles and their families. These victims would roughly mirror the current Providence statistics for juvenile victims of crime (28% white, 24% black, 41 % Hispanic, and 7% Asian).

Family Service is experienced in working directly with victims of crime. For 15 years, we have had gender specific residential treatment programs for children who are victims of severe domestic abuse and neglect. Many are also victims of violent crimes such as rape or molestation. After being placed under the custody of DCYF (Department of Children, Youth, and Families), they are enrolled in our treatment homes. By this time, they may have been suffering for years from depression, behavioral disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of prolonged victimization and exposure to violence. Treatment becomes intensive and long-term and even then, these children and adolescents still remain at high risk of repeat victimization, premature parenting, and economic and substance dependence.

The Police Go Team would allow us to begin treatment immediately increasing the victim's chance for successful treatment and a healthy life. Family Service is very experienced in coordinating with other mental health agencies to provide appropriate referrals and reduce overlapping. Family Solutions CEDARR, a Family Service program was established for this specific purpose, acting as an assessment, referral, and evaluation service for 16 affiliated agencies and hospitals.

In addition to the children in residential care, another approximately 1,350 individuals (about 75% of our clients) have been victims of violent crime, criminal abuse, or criminal neglect and are in treatment for the long-term effects of victimization. The other 25% are in treatment for emotional abuse that does not qualify as criminal or for substance abuse that may also be the result of earlier criminal victimization.

Family Service is also experienced in providing 2417 crisis intervention services by telephone or in person for our own clients. We also provide crisis intervention assistance to the Providence Housing Authority and the Providence School Department. We are one of the only agencies in Rhode Island to have a crisis intervention program as well as a Critical Incident Stress Management and Debriefing Team for community victims of disasters or crime.

Service that is also affiliated with Memorial Hospital, South County Hospital, the Groden Center, the Meeting Street Center, the Sargent Center, and Hasbro Children's Hospital among others. CEDARR acts as a one-stop clearinghouse, providing one-stop assessment, referral, and evaluation for clients. The Police Go Team will follow similar guidelines in making its longer term referrals, working cooperatively with other social service agencies. Family Service has cooperative arrangements with more than 100 social service agencies in Rhode Island.

More than 350 employees work at Family Service which operates with a budget in excess $16 million. Of that, state contracts provide nearly $6.5 million and third-party billing provides slight more than $7.5 million. Tuition, foundation and corporate grants, donations, and the United Way make up the remaining funding.

Women and minorities are well represented throughout all levels of management including the CEO and members of senior management. Ethnically and racially, only Asians are somewhat underrepresented. Among our staff, 33 members were identified as Hispanic, 51 as black, 5 as Asian. Of 17 board members, 8 are women. The board includes Hispanic and Asian members. Family Service tries to reflect the community in its outreach, programming, and hiring of staff.

In January, when a census of languages spoken was last taken, Family Service had 38 staff members fluent in Spanish, 13 in Portuguese, 5 in French, 4 each in Creole, Laotian, and Thai, 3 in Italian, 2 in Khamer, and one in Hmong, Wolof, Hebrew, and Mandarin Chinese. We also have a Sign Language interpreter and a telephone line for the deaf. Our cases are drawn from all racial and ethnic categories. Last year's statistics show that 44% of our total clients were Caucasian; 12% black; 2% Asian; 29% Hispanic; 6% multi-racial; and 7% unknown.

The Family Service Quality Management department is responsible for evaluation and client satisfaction surveys throughout the agency. They will extend their responsibility to this program and maintain its records separately. Our client satisfaction surveys are a standardized testing tool. Quality Management is also headed by a vice president who is a member of senior management.

The Problem:

Providence police records for 2002 indicate that 928 children were either victims of violent crime or present during domestic violence serious enough to lead to an arrest. Of the 204 children identified as victims of violent crime, 28% were white; 24% black; 41 % Hispanic; and 7% Asian. However, national studies indicate that these numbers represent only the tip of the iceberg. A 1999 interview study by Finkelhor and Ormrod, 1999 indicates that only one in four violent crimes against juveniles is ever reported to the police.

The National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that children as young as 12 to 14 are as likely to be victims of violent crime as older children 15 to 17 but the younger the age of the victim, the less likely reporting will occur, even in serious incidents, unless sexual molestation occurs. Crimes against young victims are frequently dismissed as "kids stuff' that police would be uninterested in and should be handled privately. However, the trauma and long term affects experienced by young victims of violence are as severe or more severe than that experienced by adults.

Minority victims are also at greater risk of repeat victimization but they are also the least likely to report violent crime. A recent study by Shaffer and Ruback found that among minorities ages 1 I to 17, victims had better than a 50-50 chance of becoming victims again within a year.

Also in 2002, 355 children witnessed domestic violence leading to arrest in their own homes and another 369 children heard the incident without seeing it directly. Children in homes with domestic violence have at least a 30% risk of becoming victims of that violence. Some studies estimate this risk factor as high as 60%. In Providence, those estimates translate to between 217 and 434 children being at high risk of becoming victims of domestic violence.

When Providence police come to a scene of violent crime, especially crime involving juveniles, they are ill-equipped to provide their own mental health counseling or referrals and they have no one to call to fill that need. Although all accredited community mental health agencies have 24/7 crisis intervention teams, including Family Service, those teams only respond to calls for their own clients.

Existing teams only serve their own clients because service to non-clients is not reimbursable by third party providers. Until non-profit agencies can receive third-party payments that reimburse services to non-clients, they can not afford to provide this critically needed level of care without outside funding from sources such as VOCA. With VOCA funds, all victims, including those already on Family Service caseloads, would receive emergency treatment free of charge without third party billing.

The Police Go Team would be the first in Providence to respond to any police call involving violent crime. Based on start-up experience in Stamford, CT and referrals being received from police embedded in Providence high schools, we estimate that about 200 victims, witnesses, and their families will be served in the first year.

Today, police must quickly pack a distraught and injured child into an ambulance to ride alone to the hospital while they arrest a parent and wait for other children in the home to be picked up. With VOCA assistance, the police would immediately contact the Police Go Team member on call by cell phone. He or she would then talk to the child immediately by telephone and advise the officers on the scene on how to handle the injured child and any other siblings present. A second team member would respond to the scene to work with the uninjured siblings while the first clinician met the injured child at the hospital or at the scene. All the children involved would be referred for additional counseling.

The original collaboration between Yale and the New Haven police was the result of an incident in New Haven in which four young children witnessed their mother's violent death. The police had no other resources but to tell them to sit quietly on the bed and watch television, but to keep their feet off the floor so they wouldn't get bloody. In the aftermath of this terrible incident, the police approached Yale for help leading to the development of the CD-CP program.

One study after another concerned with child victimization stresses the importance of reaching these children as soon after their victimization as possible. With minority families under-reporting violent victimization of their children, social service agencies do not become aware of these children's mental health needs unless they become perpetrators themselves. By the time children victimized by domestic violence have been legally removed from their parents' homes by the Department of Children, Youth, and Families and reach Family Service or other residential treatment programs, they are already suffering from post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression, and other mental health and behavioral problems that are difficult to treat. Their achievement levels are frequently several years behind grade in school. Delays in treatment and intervention lead to longer stays in treatment and higher levels of repeat victimization as well as substantially added risk for premature parenting, dependence, substance abuse, and violence.

Large numbers of children as old as 16 though 18 are in intensive residential care and treatment. At the time of the December 2001 Department of Children, Youth, and Families census, there were 254 children in Rhode Island, ages 16 through 18, who were in residential treatment, 20 with Family Service. While some of these children will return home or enter foster care, many will simply age out of the system with their problems still unresolved. If they had received early intervention, in most cases their prognosis would have been different.

Research studies published by the Office of Juvenile Justice also recommend immediate mental health and social service intervention for children who are victims as a strategy for encouraging more low-income and minority families to access the justice system when a child has been victimized rather than treating it as "kid's stuff" of no interest to the police. Ability to accessing the justice system is correlated with an overall reduction in victims becoming perpetrators.

In Providence minority under-reporting is particularly evident among blacks. Since victim and perpetrator frequently share the same racial and ethnic characteristics, it would be expected that the victim and perpetrator statistics would be roughly similar. Instead among blacks, 43% of the reported perpetrators but only 24% of the reported victims of violent crime were black. The figures are reversed for whites; 28% of the reported victims but only 9% of the reported perpetrators.

Action Plan:

The program has three major goals supported by five objectives:

Goal 1: To diminish the immediate trauma and longer term mental and behavioral health issues experienced by victims of domestic violence or other violent crime;

Objective 1 A: The Police Go Team responds to calls from police on the scene on a 24/7 basis to provide immediate counseling by telephone or on-site to victims before depression and posttraumatic stress symptoms have time to develop.

Objective 1 B: The Police Go Team arranges follow-up referrals to appropriate community mental health and social service agencies for victims of violence needing longer term out-patient or home-based mental health counseling and social services.

Goal 2: To help victims, especially juvenile and minorities, access the justice system;

Objective 2: Based on referrals from the Police Go Team, a Family Service intern or member of the intake staff helps victims receive crime victim compensation benefits.

Goal 3: To lower the overall level of community violence.

Objective 3 A: The Police Go Team provides for victim's immediate basic safety and security needs al the crime scene using emergency funds if necessary.

Objective 4 A: The Police Go Team helps victims avoid repeat victimization by providing referrals for longer term counseling for depression or lifestyle choices that are correlated with victimization like substance abuse, running away, taking personal retribution, or gang activity.

The Police Go Team will consists of four independently licensed or master's level clinicians already on staff to permit quick start-up (within 4 to 6 weeks). At our last census in January, Family Service had 34 clinicians at this level from whom the team could be drawn. Four are from minority groups and 11 are bilingual, speaking a total of seven different languages. Team members will initially be solicited from those clinicians who are already certified in Critical Incident Stress Management and Debriefing. (24 Family Service staff members have already been certified.) Team members will still undergo special training to improve their effectiveness in working with traumatized and shocked victims at an active crime scene in the midst of a police investigation.

The Police Go Team is a priority project that will be headed by Karen Cunningham, a senior vice president who is also an independently licensed clinician with more than 20 years of experience working in Rhode Island. She was recently given a distinguished alumni award by Rhode Island College. (See Appendix H.)

The Police Go Team will be on-call 24/7 on a rotating basis to respond to all police requests for emergency mental health assistance for victims, regardless of whether the victim is a current client of Family Service. At the discretion of the clinician on call, additional team members may also be activated.

Team members will be responsible for advising police on the scene and for providing direct counseling, longer term referral, and support services to victims. Team members will be able to draw on emergency funds to call a locksmith in the middle of the night or arrange a hotel room in cases when victims can't be placed in a shelter (no beds available or they have a teenage son) or provide emergency transportation to a relative's home, a meal, diapers, or clothing.

Follow-up assistance to apply for crime victim compensation benefits will become the responsibility of an intern in the Bachelor of Social Work program at Rhode Island College as one becomes available. (Family Service generally has one or two interns from this program on a regular basis and is currently working to formalize the internship procedures. Another vice president who is a member of senior management teaches in this program.) During any periods when an intern is not available, counseling and assistance with crime victim compensation benefits will be provided by the intake staff which include a licensed clinician and a bilingual paraprofessional case manager.

Referrals for longer term treatment (outside the scope of VOCA funds) will be made back to Family Service or to the more than 100 social service organizations with which we have either formal agreements or ongoing relationships.

The Police Go Team is an essential piece of an innovative national Child Development Community Policing (CD-CP) model developed by the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine and the New Haven police at the time Providence Police Chief Esserman was working as deputy chief in New Haven. As police chief, he introduced this model in Stamford, CT. Now, as chief in Providence, he approached Family Service about introducing this model in Providence. It has already been implemented in more than a dozen cities and is the first of only four models addressing youth victimization recommended in the National Juvenile Justice Action Plan.

Implementing the Police Go Team would be a first step in implementing the full CD-CP model. Family Service and the Providence police had already begun working cooperatively on behalf of children in high schools in the city with police referring children directly to Family Service for assistance. Family Service, supported by the Providence police (has requested funding from the Rhode Island Foundation to implement this program.

Aside from assistance with crime victim compensation benefits, the use of volunteers is inappropriate. Counseling highly traumatized victims while they are still at the crime scene is too highly skilled for even our experienced paraprofessional case managers. Besides therapeutic concerns, Family Service avoids compromising the confidentiality of its clients by using volunteers except in highly specific situations.

Evaluation:

Quality Management is also headed by a vice president who is a member of senior management and the supervisor of the Critical Incident Team. It is responsible for all evaluation and client satisfaction surveys throughout the agency. It uses standardized evaluation instruments. Quality Management will extend their responsibility to this program and target this sample so that those served by this program can be identified separately. Our evaluation instrument also solicits comments so qualitative as well as quantitative information will be derived.

Current client satisfaction surveys (75% of clients are victims of crime) show extremely high levels of satisfaction with the services received and willingness to refer others to the program. (See chart in section C - victim satisfaction.) The current demographic profile of clients served by race and ethnicity mirrors closely the demographic profile of our region.

As full implementation of the CD-CP model is achieved, Quality Management will be assisted by the special research network developed by Yale through funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice to provide evaluation assistance to all cities using their model.

Measures of success:

Does the team receives the anticipated 200 emergency calls over a 12-month period?

Do the victims sewed roughly correlate to the target group in age, race/ethnicity, and location of crime scene?

Are 80% of the victims who qualify for crime victim compensation benefits receiving assistance with applications?

Measurement criteria will include:

The number of emergency calls responded to by telephone vs. the number responded to at the crime scene (measure of the severity of the calls); The reason for the call - child on scene, domestic violence, violent crime, etc. The demographic profile of the victims and the location of the crime scene; The number of primary and secondary victims counseled at the scene; The number of victims filing victim compensation applications; The number of victims and families referred for longer term counseling; The number of victims needing emergency aid with basic needs or safety issues; The number of victims referred for substance abuse counseling; The number of victims referred for counseling because of gang involvement.

Susan Erstling, LICSW, PhD. Vice President of Trauma, Intake and Emergency Services

Family Service of Rhode Island
PO Box 6688
Providence, RI 02940
401-331-1350
e-mail: Erstlingsu@familyserviceri.org
mailto:Erstlingsu@familyserviceri.org