Services for Uniformed Safety Personnel

Uniformed safety personnel are confronted with the challenges of protecting the public and the communities that they serve. Behavioral Health Consultants provides a variety of services to meet the unique needs of uniformed safety personnel.

• Employee Assistance Programs
• Pre-Employment Evaluations
• Fitness for Duty Evaluations
• Critical Incident Debriefings
• Peer Support Team Development and Training
• Training Programs (POST Certified)

Employee Assistance Programs

The work of uniformed services personnel is unique in combining a high level of danger and variability with high public visibility and expectations.  The unique stresses that are part of this work requires an EAP that understands the uniformed service worker and their life. We recognize that they have:

 

BHC has extensive experience in providing EAP programs for big-city and small-town uniformed services departments. In every new contract, we have increased utilization over previous EAP providers; that is, uniformed personnel have found us accessible and valuable in preventing and resolving problems.  They USE our services. BHC makes a practice of outreach through activities such as attendance at roll call, “ride along” on selected patrols, and responding quickly to emergencies any time of day or night.  We gain the respect and trust that allow us to make an impact.

Pre-employment Evaluations

BHC has developed the Law Enforcement Selection System (LESS) to identify those candidates who have the greatest likelihood for success as public safety personnel. The BHC LESS system uses a “multimodal” evaluation process that allows for a quantitative and a qualitative assessment of each candidate. The strength of the LESS system is that it provides a qualitative description of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses as well as quantitative information about the candidate’s profile compared to the “ideal” candidate. We are able to make clear-cut, defensible predictions of your candidate’s eventual adjustment, saving time and trouble in the selection of officer candidates.

Our system is based on sound, validated research involving thousands of actual public safety candidates. Our chief evaluators, Drs. Arnold D. Holzman and Mark J. Kirschner, have published extensively on both the methodology and effectiveness of the LESS program in publications such  CT POLICE CHIEF and LAW & ORDER.

BHC offers a similar selection methodology for firefighters, dispatchers, and other emergency personnel as well.

Fitness For Duty Evaluations

Public Safety Personnel, as a function of their work, may be exposed to highly stressful, even life altering events. Fitness for Duty evaluations are necessary to determine whether an individual, after experiencing such an event, is emotionally ready to return to work. An individual who is still suffering the effects of a prior event is at risk for inadequate performance, thus potentially placing himself/herself or their colleagues at risk. Events that may necessitate a fitness for duty evaluation include on the job traumatic injury, discharge of one’s weapon, witnessing a colleague or citizen being severely injured or killed, among others. The goals of the psychological fitness for duty evaluation are to evaluate for residual emotional or behavioral effects following a traumatic work related event. Our fitness for duty evaluations utilize well accepted and state of the art assessment measures to evaluate the uniformed worker’s functioning.

Critical Incident Debriefings

Whenever a tragedy occurs, i.e. a death, a horrific car accident, a shooting, or a serious injury, these events can be extremely upsetting to uniformed safety personnel.  Critical incidents in the public safety field require an immediate response from a trained mental health professional.  BHC has the ability to respond immediately when contacted to provide CISD services.  

Given our experience in working with sworn personnel, we understand how important it is to respond immediately when a critical incident has occurred.  One of the benefits in working with a Connecticut-based EAP company, is our ability to rely upon our own clinical staff to respond to critical incidents in a timely fashion.

Peer Support Development and Training

Historically police and fire personnel have been reluctant to access EAP or psychological services.  This stems from a variety of factors, including the relatively closed culture of first-responders, the stigma sometimes still associated with seeking counseling, political concerns, confidentiality issues, among others.

Because of these concerns, BHC offers a Police Peer Support program. The objectives of the program are to identify and train a select group of police officers in your department to be available to officers at risk, to “lend an ear” to officers having difficulties either on the job or a home and to serve as a liaison with the EAP. The training consists of:

• Introduction to BHC’s EAP
• Understanding the unique concerns of first responders
• How to identify coworkers in need of referral
• How to facilitate a referral
• How to serve as a resource and facilitator for colleagues and their families
• Understanding the nature and impact of:
• Substance Abuse/Gambling
• Depression/Suicidal Ideation
• Divorce/Family Issues
• PTSD/Trauma
• Confidentiality

Training Programs

BHC has the ability to develop and customize training to meet the unique needs of the Uniformed Agencies we serve.  We have received POSTC Police Instructor General Certification for training in the following areas:

Cultural Awareness and Diversity
Depression/ Suicide
Stress Management
Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships

We are in the process of submitting approval for additional behavioral health topics in the Human Relations category.