A pilot program partnering Madison Youth & Family Services (MYFS) with the Madison Police Department (MPD) has the goal of integrating social services for residents to benefit those in crisis and assist officers who respond to domestic calls. According to program’s developers, the pilot is already gathering crucial data and providing information about how a future program might best be implemented.

According to MYFS Director Scott Cochran, the program will have a social worker placed at MPD to review police reports and then follow up to do outreach to residents who might benefit from support and to connect them with the area’s human services resources. The program is also data-gathering mechanism, not specific to individuals, but information such as time of day, length, and area of the call, that will provide the necessary insight to better craft a permanent program.

In response to the recent State Police Accountability Act, the MPD and MYFS are partnering towards integrating social work services with the police department, according to Cochran. This new law, among a number of other provisions, requires the state Department of Emergency Services & Public Protection and local police departments to evaluate the feasibility and potential impact of using social workers to respond to calls for assistance or accompany a police officer on certain calls for assistance

“As the MPD is already well-trained in community policing, we believe the role for social work in Madison begins at the level of identifying and assisting the people who have been involved with police intervention and may also have unmet needs for human services,” Cochran said. “As police officers often engage with people at a moment of crisis, they are often in a position to observe the conditions surrounding that crisis.”

Using those observations may help the town identify unmet needs.

“Such needs may include behavioral health care, elder care, substance abuse treatment, food insecurity, housing, and/or domestic violence and these issues often contribute directly or indirectly when someone is the subject of police intervention. Positioning social workers in partnership with police officers will more likely lead to identifying and addressing those needs,” Cochran said. “Chief [Jack] Drumm had reached out to me last year, in light of the Police Accountability Act. The chief is very involved at the state level with how we can be part of the movement to integrate social services with the police departments.

“At the state level, there are a number of different ideas of how that integration can occur,” Cochran continued. “Madison has never had this service, so it was difficult for us to know exactly how that might look, to integrate social work with police. We wanted to pilot something this year with a social work student…and came up with this program.”

Tiffany Torello a local social work graduate student at Sacred Heart University, was selected for this position of “extern,” rather than an intern. The voluntary position was critical to the actual operation of the program, according to Cochran, and Torello is already gathering important data that will be critical to informing how an eventual permanent program might function.

“There is a lot of ‘in the moment involvement’ learning. We are finding that listening to all of the people involved, is helping us create more ways to help them,” Torello said. “I already have officers alerting me, post incident, to individuals or families that are potentially in crisis.”

“MYFS and MPD had to be creative to launch a pilot this year, and to that end have created a unique short-term position that was approved by the town as an ‘externship.’ The program utilizes a current [master of social work] student who will work as the pilot program social worker,” said Cochran. “The social worker will be mostly stationed at the MPD to observe, interact, and identify opportunities for social work outreach and then provide that outreach.

“A person does not have to be the subject of police intervention in order to receive outreach, but rather anyone noted as a part of a police incident,” Cochran continued. “At the conclusion of the pilot program, the social worker will produce a report that summarizes their programmatic experience so we can continue to develop such services for the future.

MPD Lieutenant Jeremy Yorke, who, among other responsibilities, is the liaison between the department and MYFS, said the program is one that has significant potential to impact the community. The pilot is currently underway and will run until the end of May, according to Yorke.

“This is a great way to extend our community policing work,” said Yorke. “This is a way to offer follow up services and it is one that is very customer service oriented. Law enforcement is really transitioning to a focus on community policing and this is a great example of a way for us to offer more services. This is where we can coordinate with a social work to coordinate with a family of individual to help them access and coordinate social services that would most beneficial to them.

“From a community policing aspect, it gives us another tool to help the community,” Yorke continued. “This is such an opportunity to help residents get the help they may need. It’s offering and providing an opportunity to an individual where we can actually help them. At the end of the day we can help deescalate a situation, but at the same time, as Scott said, we are not social workers…so ultimately it allows the department to be better equipped to deal with a crisis and those needs. We now have another tool that can truly assist citizens.”

Yorke said that any program that ensures both citizen and police safety is something that the department is eager to develop. According to Yorke, social work intervention can only help with an immediate emergency situation, but it has great potential in reducing future crises and emergency calls.

“[A]s a pilot we will use what we learn in the process about our system and our community needs to determine the best approach to integrating social work services with the [police department] in the near future,” Cochran said. “What we already knew was that in this town, the police are routinely coming into contact with people in crisis. But police are not social workers…and I think it’s a disservice to the police and to residents to hold police to that standard of a social worker…it seems reasonable to find a way to integrate a social worker somewhere in that process.”

Both Yorke and Cochran stressed that the program is completely voluntary, confidential, and no information gathered by social services will be used by the police department.

According to Cochran, the MYFS and MPD are eager to develop a custom model that utilizes and builds upon existing municipal resources and removes barriers to those assisting in a crisis.

“MYFS currently has within its capacity to provide a wide array of mental health services and social services, and our staff includes licensed mental health professionals and graduate-level interns. There is an existing relationship between MPD and MYFS and great potential to build on that foundation and it is our belief that we are best suited to develop the right model for Madison. It is our collective goal to create one that is best fitted to our own community needs, and one that is responsive, cost-efficient and comprehensive,” said Cochran.

For more information about MYFS, call 203-245-5645 or visit www.madisonct.org/812/Youth-Family-Services. The MPD non-emergency number is 203-245-6500.