Bill promotes peer counseling programs | News
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A bill filed for consideration in Frankfort this year would allow law enforcement agencies, fire departments, dispatch centers and emergency responders to create peer-to-peer counseling programs in their agencies to help emergency workers cope with job-related trauma and stress.
Senate Bill 64 would let agencies train employees in peer-support counseling. After training, those employees could counsel co-workers, helping them cope with the stresses unique to careers in emergency response.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Mike Wilson, a Bowling Green Republican and a member of the Senate’s GOP leadership team. Wilson, who has served as a law enforcement chaplain, said law enforcement officers and firefighters experience stress on calls, and dispatchers can be impacted emotionally by the emergency call they take.
According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Department of Justice, about 15% of law enforcement officers have had symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I’ve served as a police chaplain, and the things our emergency responders see are pretty horrific,” Wilson said. “They have to deal with that every day and go home without it affecting their family or home-life.
“These are situations they face every day, just trying to protect us. But “it’s hard for them to talk to anybody” about their job experiences. It’s just like a lot of people who have been in war won’t talk about it.”
The peer programs would be confidential, unless an employee being counseled expressed an intent, plan or means of committing suicide, issued an explicit and imminent threat to a specific person, admitted to a crime or gave the counselor other information that must be reported by law, such as information about suspected child or elder abuse.
A participant or counselor couldn’t be called to testify about what was said during counseling at trial, unless the information fell under one of the exceptions in the bill.
“This is something our police department (in Bowling Green) wants, and in talking with the League of Cities, (support) seems widespread,” Wilson said.
Paul Nave, director of Owensboro-Daviess County Dispatch, said the bill is well-intentioned. But he said training employees in counseling would be challenging for the center.
“It would be very difficult for me to tax my staff” by sending employees to peer counselor training, Nave said.
If the agency’s trained peer counselor left the profession, a new person would have to be sent for training, which would “start the process all over again,” Nave said.
The Daviess dispatch center uses the post-critical incident seminar at the state Department for Criminal Justice Training for stress and trauma counseling, Nave said.
Through the post-critical incident seminar “we have specially trained … counselors, and they go through specific training on confidentiality,” he said.
Wilson’s bill has not yet been assigned to a committee for a hearing.
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