· Analyze the long-term effects of a juvenile entering the criminal justice system.

Social Change: Working Across Disciplines

Social Change: Working Across Disciplines Program Transcript

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PETE MEAGHER: Describe your initial impressions of working with social workers.

GREG KOEHLER: Sure. So if I can tell a story to illustrate it, when I was pretty new in my law enforcement career, there was a family that had moved into a neighborhood. They had a lot of challenges. They were a single parent. It was a mother, three children- – a 12-year-old, and one was about two, and one was about five. So she had three children on her own. She’s working two jobs, a daytime job and an evening job, leaving the 12-year-old in charge of the two younger children for most of the evening.

And they had lived there for a couple of weeks. And some of the neighbors started to notice that in the evening, when the 12-year-old was in charge, there would be a lot of yelling and carrying on in the house. And they were concerned, and they called the police. And we went there, and we quickly realized that obviously, the 12-year-old should not be in charge of a situation like this. The house was in pretty bad condition in terms of it was filthy, and the kids were really not receiving the type of care that they should in terms of food and just what you would expect in a home for kids of that age.

And we had contacted the mother at work, and she was pretty tired, I think, from working two jobs and having this family situation. And this was not something that she really wanted to deal with. And we spoke to her, and we got social services involved with the family. And they worked a lot of things out for her. They showed her a lot of resources that were available so that she wouldn’t have to work two jobs. And I think it was a matter, too, of her just sitting down with somebody and looking at her life holistically in terms of she is a single parent. That’s not something that’s going to change. She’s got three children. That’s not going to change.

What type of strategies or changes could she make in her life right now that would allow her to parent and provide proper care? And one of the first things that she did was stop that second job. But that was a nice situation to see, because there were improvements that we could see in terms of not seeing the family in that situation again. And what I consider some relatively common sense changes were able to resolve that situation. So it was nice to have the support of social services that could really come in and spend a lot of time with the family that was needed, at least initially.

PETE MEAGHER: Do you believe that that intervention that happened in that instance– was that able to head things off and keep it from getting to the criminal justice system?

GREG KOEHLER: Well, I think so. All the indications that we had in the home– especially the younger children were not being cared for properly. One thing that stands out to me about that case, having young children of my own at the time, the first thing I

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Social Change: Working Across Disciplines

saw when we walked in the door was that the younger child that was still in a diaper was in desperate need of a diaper change.

They were eating food that was– having cereal for dinner, dry cereal for dinner, stuff like that. And the 12-year-old in that situation was– whether he knew it or not, was being placed in a position that was– well, most of us know, if we have children, that even adults have difficulty supervising young children sometimes. So to ask someone as a 12-year-old to do that is a big challenge.

So it is difficult to know what you prevent. But I think it’s pretty safe to assume in a situation like that that it definitely kept that family– or put that family back in a position where they’re on a better route for success for everybody involved, so for sure.

Can you tell me about your initial experiences working with law enforcement?

GREG KOEHLER: Yeah. I did in-home family services in a small agency. And we would get referrals from– that came through our human services department that were interventions from the police department. So it might have been a young person who got involved in a fight in school, or who was maybe using or dealing drugs, or some sort of disruptive behavior that was happening. And the police at that point decided to, rather than choose a criminal route, refer it to human services.

So we would get involved at the– not the first signs, but things were getting– were having problems in the family. The identified problem was the young person who was struggling in school. As I said, they were getting into fights or they were causing some sort of disruption. They were at risk of stopping out of school, of leaving school.

I can think of a situation where it was a young boy who was getting in fights in the classroom, and the school and the principal were ready to kick this young person out. The police had been called to that situation on a number of occasions. So we got involved, and we engaged the family. And when we do a real comprehensive assessment, you get a sense of what’s going on for this young person.

And oftentimes, our intervention is to really help support and guide the parents. They tend to be, in those sorts of situations, maybe a little less organized, or they have their own mental health concerns that need attending to. So in that particular situation, we gave a lot of support to the parents. We gave some attention to family communication. We talked about what was going on in the family. In that particular situation, it was– the mother had a incurable illness. She was clearly deteriorating physically.

Dad had left the home and had rejoined the family, so there had been a number of disruptions. And oftentimes, what we see in the family system is that the kid starts acting out, it causes problems, and then we get involved and really support the parents to be the best parents that they can be. And what we saw over time in that particular case was that the young person maybe didn’t stop acting out altogether, but probably reduced 90% of their problematic behavior.

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Social Change: Working Across Disciplines

There was no question, by the time of probably about six to eight months in, that this young person was going to stay in school. And the family had come back together and were really functioning well. So in that case, it was interaction with law enforcement by referral where they– rather than making it a criminal situation, they referred it in to a human services type of interaction.

GREG KOEHLER: It sounds like it was pretty successful in terms of the interaction with the parents and how that all came about.

PETE MEAGHER: Yeah, it was very successful. And it was really– I think when we start in those situations, oftentimes the parents can be protective and guarded and wary about who we are and what we’re going to do. And I think our services were in-home services, so we were able to– it wasn’t they weren’t coming to our agency. We were going to them in their home, in their neighborhood. And I think that that made a lot of difference.

We could see what was going on. We could see what they were eating, and how they were eating, and how their home was being organized. And I suspect on their side of things, they probably got things a little more together when we came around. And I think that that helped them. And I think giving them time and attention to their own aches and pains and worries was really helpful for them.

GREG KOEHLER: From a law enforcement perspective, we’re oftentimes aware of the various social services that are available, and we can refer families and juveniles out to those. Unfortunately, I think one of the frustrations that we have is that we really don’t see the end result. We don’t know if an independent living situation worked out for someone or how it worked out, and we don’t necessarily know about all the referrals and how they work out unless we see that person again, which is usually not under the best of circumstances.

So I was thinking that it might be helpful to have– in some jurisdictions, they have multidisciplinary teams that meet regularly and discuss– whether they’re discussing specific cases or identifying policy and procedure and training that both law enforcement and social workers could have that would be mutually beneficial. So what are your thoughts on that?

PETE MEAGHER: Yeah. I appreciate that observation. Having run an independent living skills program, you get in the middle of the trenches. The young people get dropped off in our care, and then you all sort of go away. And I think probably on two counts, there’s two ways that I would consider best practices. One is that that independent living skills program should have its own advisory council that would include law enforcement and that could include– that would meet on a regular basis and that might include some sort of ongoing case review of situations or consultations or things like that. I think that’s a best practice.

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Social Change: Working Across Disciplines

I think another one is making sure to be a part of– that both social work and law enforcement are a part of these broader interdisciplinary teams that come together. There’s a whole bunch of them that have– whether it’s around domestic violence or it’s around youth violence or things like that, whether it be these groups and committees that come together. And there’s real pointed conversations about both cases, trends, and resources that are shared. And I think that’s actually when you can get up and out of your own chair and get together and talk about these broader issues. It’s both relieving and at times kind of fun to see each other in different contexts.

GREG KOEHLER: Right. And I think one of the key contributions that law enforcement agencies can provide, because they collect so much data from really every call, is information on the trends that they’re seeing. We’ve had an uptick in this, or we’re seeing a lot of this occurring. And unfortunately, even though law enforcement is oftentimes the first to see at least the crisis situations or the bad situations, once we start to see these issues, whether it’s opioid issues or particular issues, oftentimes these issues have been occurring for a while. It’s rare that we’re seeing the first case of this or something like that. Once we start to see it, it’s already started to develop.

So I think that a contribution that law enforcement can make to these task forces would be that we can provide the data that we have on the trends that we’re seeing and where attention needs to be focused. And I think that the folks that are involved in the social services can really quickly identify, well, here’s what we can do here, or this could be offered in this situation. So I think it would– it seems like a very natural type of collaboration between the two.

PETE MEAGHER: Yeah, I would agree.

GREG KOEHLER: I think the potential for social change is immense in terms of having a multidisciplinary approach. In fact, I think if we had representatives from other social service fields, other law enforcement agencies that would come and sit around a table and brainstorm and discuss ideas would have really good outcomes, because we all see different things to a very complex problem.

In terms of how it can change our society, I think that obviously, crime is a big issue in society and other behaviors that go along with it. So when you change certain approaches– and I’m just thinking– I’m constantly considering our incarceration rate and how high it is. So I’m thinking if we can change that, and all these people that are currently incarcerated, 10 years from now– if our rates are much lower, what are these people doing? They’re productive members of society. So from a macro standpoint, I think that there’s immense potential for change, positive change in our communities, and just overall in our culture. What do you think about it from an individual level?

PETE MEAGHER: Yeah. I think reaching the individuals in their communities and helping them get on a better path is life-altering. That’s what I’ve seen in the young people that I’ve worked with who were going down a pretty rough path. And we were able to intervene, provide them some support, get them connected into services, maybe

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Social Change: Working Across Disciplines

help their family. We’ve got them back on track. And it’s a difference between staying in a school and not staying in school.

And in some situations, it’s life-changing, life-saving. If you’re not in school, you’re relying on what’s going on in the street, and you’re getting stuff that’s pretty bad. And I think we’re– I don’t think it’s too big to say that we’re saving lives, saving families, and really preserving that. I think from the perspective of the multidisciplinary team, bringing law enforcement and social work– separate, we’re good and strong, but together, we’re much more powerful.

GREG KOEHLER: Sure.

PETE MEAGHER: And I think that that makes this– actually, I think it makes us much better at what we do and much more effective when we work together on things.

GREG KOEHLER: Yeah. I think the combination of tools and skill sets that each side brings is very important for the– I think this is– crime is a very complex social problem and oftentimes requires, in some ways, different types and different levels of responses depending on the nature of the problem. So if you get this coordinated effort, and it becomes more standard, much more the standard than the exception, then the outcomes are going to be much better, and there’s going to be much more positive social change as a result of it

PETE MEAGHER: Yeah. I would agree with that.

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