International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc.
International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc.
By: Anne Daws-Lazar, BSW
Coordinator, Washtenaw County CISM
Our team responded on a rather large critical incident in our part of southeast lower Michigan this fall. Not that there aren’t others but this one highlighted a need that isn’t always recognized.
We were called by first responders while they were still on the scene of a barricaded gunman where an officer was shot (non-fatal). Our team didn’t respond to the scene because of the nature of the incident but this early notification made it much easier for us to plan ahead. We actually had a debriefing scheduled and a debriefing team put together before the incident was completely over. But this article isn’t about that exactly. We put our heads together with administration to identify various groups that might need crisis response. One group that came up was spouses.
As we were planning the initial debriefing for first responders we also identified a time and place for a spouses debriefing and had that information available when we did the debriefing for first responders.
I’m not the spouse of a first responder, nor were there first responders in my family. This is rather unusual for people ‘like me’ since I worked as a dispatcher for a Michigan police department for 25 years. There ARE countless people who I consider ‘family’ who put themselves in harms way on a daily basis. Not to mention, as a first responder who was not on the scene, I know that I was, and continue to be, affected emotionally/mentally by incidents that made me LESS than the perfect spouse when I got home!
This recent situation was eye opening for me. First of all, as soon as we planned the “spouse debriefing” we started to get inquiries about whether other family members could come. We decided that, of course they could – teenagers or older please. The overwhelming expressions of the family members in this “family debriefing” were ‘FINALLY’ and ‘no one has ever done this for us before.’ Why not? And not just for this department but all together: Why not? I think there are a few reasons for this. In my early years working in a police agency there were frequent department parties that included families – Christmas parties for kids, picnics in the summer, an annual party in the winter for adults to dress up and go out for dinner and entertainment. That activity seems to have fallen off in recent years. I’m sure this isn’t true in all areas of the country or even the state. If family interaction is part of the culture of the department you work for or represent – great! That makes the question of what to do for families of first responders so much easier. But it seems in many cases, people are just busy with their own lives. This disconnection makes it harder to reach out to people in times of distress. And this disconnection comes at a time where there is ‘over connection’ in the media! Funny how we see pictures of what people had for dinner pretty regularly on Facebook or Instagram but we don’t necessarily really KNOW what is going on with people that we sometimes spend 8-12 hours a day with in a first responder setting whether it’s a car/console or other type of rig.
Unlike their first responder family members, families didn’t actively pursue a ‘career’ as the family of a first responder. You could say perhaps (if they are spouses) that they ‘knew what they were signing up for’ but that is not solace for the stress that comes with ‘breaking news’ indicating that a first responder has been injured or worse. And then the ensuing ‘pins and needles’ of stress and anxiety while they wait to see if the injured party is THEIR first responder.
This incident has given our team a greater awareness of the circles of involvement in a traumatic incident. So maybe it’s time to do some ‘pre-event’ education for this group of people. And certainly we should have situational awareness of this group when we sit down to strategically plan when we are called to do a large response for first responders. As with all groups for whom we provide service, it is much easier to get to them after a traumatic incident if we have developed a relationship with them pre-event. How we do that with families of first responders remains a question. Mental health and wellbeing are at the forefront of many discussions with first responder agencies now. I think this should include some opportunities for families of first responders.
I think part of the responsibility for this lies with our CISM teams since WE serve first responders. After all, their wellbeing is somewhat dependent on the wellbeing of their families.
Our team is now looking at ways to make this part of our protocol. What will this look like? Stay tuned!
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