NASW Social Work Talks - EP45: Clinical Social Work in a Police Department

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

Heather Burzynski, MSW, APSW, SAC-IT, works as a clinical social worker with the Green Bay Police Department. She talks about the benefits of having a social worker embedded within a police department.

This is NASW Social Work Talks, and I'm your host, Aaliyah Wright. When someone calls the police, social workers aren't typically the first on the scene. But that's changing, as social workers are becoming part of police departments. Today we're talking to Heather Brzezinski, a clinical social worker with the police department in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Heather has experience as a crisis counselor in a medium-security men's state prison and has worked with clients with PTSD. Her education is in substance abuse, corrections, and criminal justice. Welcome, Heather, and thank you for joining us. Yeah, thank you for having me.

Listeners, Heather reached out to us soon after the new year when we shared a story on social media about another police social worker. That story got a lot of responses, so we're really excited to talk to you today, Heather. great I'm excited to get this role out there and have it become more known around the nation great so are we you're a clinical social worker with the Green Bay Police Department so what do we call you a social worker cop a police social worker so I think that my official title is community crisis because I'm out working in the community but within the police department they typically just call me a clinician um so i've never been called either but i would answer to both and do you consider your role to be law enforcement um no i don't think so um i think

that both myself and law enforcement have a common goal um but we have different ways of getting to that goal um and both are right uh we i think that that's what makes the partnership so good We kind of each bring different backgrounds and different things to the table, and that, like, is what makes our partnership so great and so effective. So do you wear a uniform? For my position, they want me to look as not law enforcement as possible. So I don't have a vest. I'm typically in business casual clothes. Sometimes I wear jeans.

I don't wear a uniform of any kind. I have a lanyard around my neck that has my ID in it, and I identify myself as a social worker. What are some of the biggest challenges that Green Bay is facing right now that affect your work? Green Bay has a pretty large homeless population right now, and in that population, we're seeing a lot of untreated mental illness. We also are seeing a lot of substance abuse and alcohol, and meth is pretty popular in this area right now. All of those can combine into one thing, or they can be separate, but there's quite a bit of all of the above. What kinds of situations are you called to work on? If I'm dispatched to a call, it is a lot of the times for assessment.

Wisconsin has State Statute 51. We call it Chapter 51. It's for emergency detentions. So I will assess those individuals, determine if there's criteria, if they are a danger to themselves or others, if they're not able to care for themselves, and then we'll kind of go from there. I also help with voluntary hospitalization if people want to go get some help themselves. I can connect people to all different kinds of resources in terms of housing or case management

if they're looking for food or jobs, anything like that. A lot of the time, though, I do a lot of proactive work. I read the police calls that happened the day before, and if I see any kind of mental illness or what may be mental illness or substance abuse, I go out and try to do something before it escalates to a crisis. So you're doing follow-up? Yep, lots of follow-up, lots of proactive work, but I also am dispatched to calls in the moment as well. How do you and officers who are not social workers work together on calls? So within my position, I work with two specific behavioral health officers who are pretty extensively trained on mental health and their jobs. But besides those two officers, Green Bay

Police Department has 77 officers that are CIT trained. So it's Community Crisis Intervention Team. So those officers have gone through a week-long training on elderly and mental health and anyone considered kind of a vulnerable population. So even when I'm working with patrol officers, a lot of them are CIT trained. So they come in with a mental health background and knowledge. And how long have you been working in this role? So this role, I'm the first person in this role for Green Bay, and it started in June. So we are going on about seven months now. Wow, really recent. Yeah, yeah. And this is, we're the fourth team in Wisconsin to have specific officers and a clinician paired together. I think some of the other cities are Madison,

Milwaukee, and Wausau. And then Green Bay is number four. So this is relatively new in the state of Wisconsin. Are the other clinicians you work with also social workers? So I'm the only social worker in this role. The two officers I work with, they're behavioral health officers. They were just regular patrol officers who expressed an interest in mental health. They went through the training and then have gone through even further training beyond the CIT. They had to apply, go through that whole process, and they are strictly mental health officers. They don't do any patrol work anymore. Heather, how might having a social worker on the force make the work of law enforcement officers easier?

I personally am able to streamline the process, which kind of makes it easier on everyone involved, especially the client. I respond out to calls in the moment. The person doesn't have to repeat their story, which can be re-traumatizing. They don't have to be taken somewhere else. We can get all of the work that needs to be done done there on the call. And that makes it less stressful for the client as well. another benefit is I'm actually hired through the county so I have access to all of that information whether or not a client is already has a case manager I can find that out while on

the call and call their case manager and the case manager can respond there's so many benefits to having a social worker in law enforcement law enforcement they they have that special training a lot of them for mental health. But the truth is, is that they're not social workers. So I have a different training, they have a different training, and there's benefits to each. But it's much more trauma-informed, I think, to have a social worker partnered with law enforcement. Why are you interested in this type of work in this arena? My interest has always been in mental health. And I think this position was just new and exciting, and it was a chance to do better in the community.

It's not something that is common, but I'm trying to get it out there because the more that I'm in the role, the more that I see how good it is. My background is also in criminal justice, and that kind of played in it as well as corrections. So I kind of saw all different sides of it, and I kind of want to try to prevent people from getting involved in that aspect of corrections and criminal justice. now you mentioned your background and how you got involved in this work how does a social worker get into this type of field what kinds of backgrounds or interests are helpful do you think um I think that substance abuse is a big thing just because there tends to be a lot of like

comorbidity and mental health and substance abuse especially in the Midwest I think that I have a a previous background with crisis and I think that that helped a lot coming into the role knowing the state statutes that apply up and down definitely help mental health helps a lot kind of having a knowledge of the criminal justice system helps it you know it kind of depends even with different backgrounds I think different people could bring different things to the role so it would be beneficial for almost anyone to kind to get involved. I know in this position, they did require the master's degree, and they did require the substance abuse. And that was just kind of the baseline. And then from there, whatever

extra you bring is just a bonus. And Heather, is there anything else you'd like our listeners to know? It's certainly challenging. I go home a lot of the days and I'm just, you know, mentally drained. One of the biggest challenges that I face is with HIPAA, because social workers are bound so much by HIPAA, but that's not the case with law enforcement. So I'm not allowed to tell my partners a lot of things. I can't update them on situations. So I think that's the biggest challenge we run into so far, because there's just two different standards of confidentiality. some days are definitely difficult but I think the majority of the days I go home feeling like I made a difference whether the person believes so or not at the

time I think that this is just catching on we've gone to different states for training we were recently in Arlington Massachusetts learning from their team we're trying to go to Tucson in the spring to learn from their team so it's definitely taking an effect all over the country and I think it's a great position and it's challenging but it's definitely needed just all around so it's starting to spread to other states nationwide and then by you going and looking at what other people are doing in other states that that probably I would have guessed helps inform what you do too oh absolutely yeah and I know a

bunch of other places within Wisconsin are kind of watching our team to see how how successful it may or may not be, to see if they should implement it in their area as well. So right now it's a lot of data tracking and just kind of showing how successful this team is. But even beyond the data and the numbers, which are important, but, you know, we're seeing an effect in the community as well, and that's just so rewarding. When you say you're seeing an effect in the community, what type of effect are you talking about? So we are seeing the number of emergency detentions go down by quite a bit, and we're seeing more voluntary hospitalizations go up. So that means we're not taking people's

rights away, but these individuals are getting the help that they need without that happening. Listeners, we'll be right back. NASW Press is the leading scholarly press in the social sciences. Our publications reach faculty, practitioners, agencies, and researchers in social work and related disciplines. Visit naswpress.org for scholarly books, reference works, brochures, and periodicals. Heather, can you give a specific example of a case that you've handled recently that demonstrated the value of having a social worker embedded in the police department? You know, if someone is on like a mental health commitment of sorts, they're required to take their medication. When they don't take their medication, we kind of see a decompensation in that where a lot of their behaviors, if you're not well trained, might appear to be more criminal than mental health.

So recently we had someone who was on a commitment, stopped taking their medication and was doing some things that were kind of dangerous, such as, you know, walking in the middle of the street, hitting cars and like with their hands and just doing kind of bizarre behaviors. And I was able to, I'm able to listen to the law enforcement radio and hear the calls that are going out in real time as it's happening. so I was able to look up the name and see that they had a case manager within the county so I called their worker the worker responded out to the scene with law enforcement the worker was able to do what we call a return from conditional so they they put the person back into an inpatient

hospital where they were able to get restarted on their medication and kind of get back on track Whereas if that didn't happen, the person might have just been taken to jail where they likely wouldn't have been taking their medication. They would have just been released. And then the cycle would have kind of just repeated itself. Listeners, we want to thank you so much for joining us. And Heather, thank you for being on our show today. Thank you for having me. And thank you for responding to our request on social media to do this. We think that the work that you're doing is just amazing. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association

of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. Don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.