Safe Call Now's Peer Support & Mentoring Program

Safe Call Now's Captain Brian Nanavaty

Safe Call Now® and the Importance of Peer Support and Mentoring

“If you say to one flower, ‘Grow,’ but you water another, the first one won’t grow.” ~ Stephen Covey, The 8th Habit

The first line of defense against employee failure is the recognition of the first stages of peer crisis and by providing early intervention. Even better is to provide support from the first day of hire. This is difficult in the public safety environment for many reasons. Public safety employees are not trusting of individuals outside their peer groups. Public safety employees have heard hollow promises ad nauseam from those claiming to want to help. Public safety employees can quote horror stories of peers who have stepped forward for help only to face agency sanction or loss of employment. Public safety employees don’t want to appear weak by admitting they need help. And yes, public safety employees sometimes are too smart for their own good and resist attempts from well-intentioned peers unless it is already part of their agency culture.

Agencies with healthy active peer support and mentoring teams can successfully reduce the onset and life cycle of employee distress through a combination of proactive and reactive responses. Mentors are trained to work with new employees and coach them through the rough patches of early career. Peer support members help by responding to critical incidents or employee personal or professional crisis. Peer support members and mentors work in partnership to ensure long term support for peer employees and their families through a deliberate and cooperative design.

For peer support and mentoring to be successful the teams must be comprised of healthy, well respected peer employees selected through an established vetting process. Training must be relative to the function with regular training updates. Resources from within the agency and outside the agency must be identified and made available to the teams for referral. Teams must have the support- both financial and organizational from top administrators and supervisors. Agency policy must assure confidentiality.

Issues that experienced members deal with range from relationship distress to financial distress to addictive issues to stress and trauma. Team members must not feel pressured to provide clinical or professional advice outside their skill, education or comfort level- rather have the resources available to monitor and pass the employee to the proper crisis or education response.  

In 2015 Safe Call Now® established Peer Support and Mentoring training for public safety agencies and the result has been a huge success. Agencies starting peer programs and those looking to enhance their teams have benefitted from Safe Call Now® training.

For more information on Safe Call Now’s Peer Support and Mentoring training go to the Training tab at SafeCallNow.org.