Stress-management team extends help beyond police
Group aided survivors of La Loche school shooting, Broncos bus crash
The Regina Police Service has expanded the reach of its critical incident stress management (CISM) team to help people traditionally outside their purview, including those affected by the school shooting in La Loche and the Humboldt Broncos bus crash.
“Our team has a very good personal approach and that’s been felt, I think, by enough people in our community that it’s gained a little bit of momentum,” Chief Evan Bray said during a Board of Police Commissioners meeting Wednesday morning.
The 20-person team, made up of officers and civilians, has been around for 20 years and provides assistance to individuals in crisis as well as group crisis intervention.
Members are brought in when an officer or group of officers is involved in a particularly traumatic incident, or when members are experiencing a buildup of trauma over time and need assistance.
“Policing and even emergency services in general, I think, over the years has really evolved,” said Bray. “It’s not that bravado, (where) we’re tough men and women and we go in and deal with these tragic situations in our community and then go home like nothing ’s wrong.”
Sessions with the team are confidential. They begin with a debrief on the initial thoughts about the incident they were involved in, then move on to explore their reactions, experiences and symptoms since the incident, and end with helping them understand what’s happening and how to cope and move forward. Typically, they serve members of the RPS, but in January 2018 they were asked to go to La Loche to assist school staff members following the shooting that killed four and injured seven in January 2016, explained Sgt. Hans Larsen during a presentation on CISM to the board.
Two members travelled to La Loche for two days, conducted an assessment and offered a criticalincident debriefing to a select group of staff members at the school. Three team members made another trip in April and spent four days doing more debriefing with staff members.
During their visits, the team discovered a deep-rooted history of community suicides. In his presentation, Larsen noted several students had committed suicide since the shooting occurred.
The team trained school staff in order to give them the tools to start their own CISM team.
“We wanted to leave them with some tools to work through these issues like we do here at the Regina Police Service,” said Larsen.
Also in April, the CISM team offered two critical-incident stress group debriefings to the Regina Pat Canadians, whose captain, Adam Herold, was killed in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash. The same service was provided for the Regina Pats, after their coach realized some of their players were struggling with the tragedy.
The team held debriefings in two separate groups in each case, one with players and one with parents, billet parents and team staff.
“It creates a better forum for people in a group setting to be open to talk if they feel that they ’re among their peers and the people that they trust the most,” said Larsen.
“This is kind of new territory for us,” Larsen said of the team’s work with “external” groups. “We feel this has been fairly beneficial for both sides, for us to be able to do that in certain circumstances.”
The team consists of four civilian peer support members, 11 sworn peer support members, three chaplains, a team psychologist and administrative support.
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