 |
| By Shawn Ryan - The Burgh |
Plattsburgh — When an emergency
services member is in crisis, be it from substance abuse, mental issues,
problem gambling, etc. seeking help can often be harder than it is for a
civilian in the same crisis.
Police officers, fire fighters, EMS
personnel, correction officers and emergency dispatchers often worry about the
ramifications they might face within their departments if they reach out for
help. Most departments have employee assistance programs to deal with such
problems, but many first responders don’t trust these programs, feeling that
they are simply a conduit back to their department’s management. This is where
Sean Riley hopes to step in.
Riley is a former police officer
from the Seattle Washington area. He is the founder and president of Safe Call Now®, an independent not-for-profit gatekeeper organization that hopes to reach
out a hand to responders in crisis who are afraid to go to their own agencies
for help.
“We will handle everything, whether
its Internet gambling, substance abuse, PTSD, even if it’s relationship issues,
marriage, infidelity...we handle just about everything,” Riley said. “It’s any
first responder and their family members. We took an oath that if anybody calls
we’re not going to turn them away.”
Riley knows of which he speaks. A
former homicide detective from the Seattle area, Riley suffered from a
prescription drug abuse problem that eventually ended his police career. He
sought treatment, then went back to school for chemical dependency counseling.
Working in a treatment center he saw the same pattern over and over; first
responders who were afraid to go to their agency for help, often times at the
peril of their career.
“I thought ‘this is crazy,’ because
I knew from my past experience that I had gone to Employee Assistance, and
Employee Assistance had a lot of really good programs, but I knew that I wasn’t
going to say anything to them because I didn’t know where my records were
going,” he said.
So Riley went to the Lieutenant Governor’s office for
help in starting what would become Safe Call Now. What he got as well, was a
unanimously passed law in Washington State protecting the confidentiality of
these records. Calls to Safe Call Now® are held confidential under the
Washington State law, and even a state agency in New York cannot touch them.
“It’s important for people to know that if
they’re in immediate crisis, where they’re going to hurt themselves or somebody
else, we have an obligation to notify people...that said, if it is not an
imminent situation where somebody’s going to hurt themselves, people can rest
assured that we’re going to keep their records confidential,” said Barry
Thomas, President of the FBI National Academy Associates.
Riley has stood up to threats of jail time
rather than divulge their records. Every case that has gone to court thus far
has been thrown out based on Washington’s law.
Safe Call Now® was so successful in the
North West that they decided to go national a year ago. They field calls from
anyone involved in the public safety network, including the military. The
people who man Safe Call Now®’s phone lines are all current or former public
safety workers. Thomas says this is a critical aspect of Safe Call Now®.
“I think that that’s imperative, because
when people call they know that they’re going to be talking to someone who has
been there, seen it and done it.”
Safe Call Now® representatives will work
with a person in crisis to diffuse the issue on the phone, and will refer the
person to a local treatment center, depending on the issue. They will even work
with insurance companies if payment is an issue. They have helped hundreds of
responders since their inception, and hope to reach more now that they have
gone nation-wide.
More information about Safe Call Now®, as
well as the text of the Washington confidentiality law, can be found at their
website, www.safecallnow.org. Their
contact number for people in crisis is 1-206-459-3020
No comments:
Post a Comment