Saturday, August 1, 2015

Safe Call Now® Saves Emergency Personnel in Crisis... Nationwide

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


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