Transcript for Episode 45: Clinical Social Work in a Police Department

NASW Social Work Talks Podcast

Aliah Wright:
This is NASW Social Work Talks and I'm your host Aliah Wright. When someone calls the police, social workers aren't typically the first on the scene, but that's changing as social workers are becoming part of police departments. Today we're talking to Heather Burzynski, a clinical social worker with the police department in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Heather has experience as a crisis counselor in a medium security men's state prison and has worked with clients with PTSD. Her education is in substance abuse, corrections and criminal justice. Welcome Heather, and thank you for joining us.

Heather Burzynski:
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Aliah Wright:
Listeners, Heather reached out to us soon after the New Year when we shared a story on social media about another police social worker. That story got a lot of responses, so we're really excited to talk to you today, Heather.

Heather Burzynski:
Great. I'm excited to get this role out there and have it become more known around the nation.

Aliah Wright:
Great, so are we. You're a clinical social worker with the Green Bay Police Department. So what do we call you? A social worker cop, a police social worker?

Heather Burzynski:
So I think that my official title is community crisis, because I'm out working in the community. But within the police department, they typically just call me a clinician.

Aliah Wright:
Okay.

Heather Burzynski:
So I've never been called either, but I would answer to both.

Aliah Wright:
And do you consider your role to be law enforcement?

Heather Burzynski:
No, I don't think so. I think that both myself and law enforcement have a common goal, but we have different ways of getting to that goal in both our rights. I think that that's what makes the partnership so good is we each bring different backgrounds and different things to the table, and that is what makes our partnership so great and so effective.

Aliah Wright:
So do you wear a uniform?

Heather Burzynski:
For my position, they want me to look as not law enforcement as possible. So I don't have a vest; I'm typically in business casual clothes. Sometimes I wear jeans. I don't wear a uniform of any kind. I have a lanyard around my neck that has my ID in it, and I identify myself as a social worker.

Aliah Wright:
What are some of the biggest challenges that Green Bay is facing right now, that affect your work?

Heather Burzynski:
Green Bay has a pretty large homeless population right now, and in that population we're seeing a lot of untreated mental illness. We also are seeing a lot of substance abuse and alcohol, and meth is pretty popular in this area right now. All of those can combine into one thing or they can be separate, but there's quite a bit of all of the above.

Aliah Wright:
What kinds of situations are you called to work on?

Heather Burzynski:
If I'm dispatched to a call, it is a lot of the times for assessment. Wisconsin has state statute 51, they call it Chapter 51; it's for emergency detentions. So I will assess those individuals, determine if there is criteria, if they're a danger to themselves or others, if they're not able to care for themselves, and then we'll go from there.

I also help with voluntary hospitalization, if people want to go get some help themselves. I can connect people to all different kinds of resources in terms of housing or case management, if they're looking for food or jobs, anything like that. A lot of the time though, I do a lot of proactive work. I read the police calls that happened the day before and if I see any kind of mental illness or what may be mental illness or substance abuse, I'd go out and try to do something before it escalates to a crisis.

Aliah Wright:
So you're doing follow-up?

Heather Burzynski:
Yep. Lots of follow-up, lots of proactive work. But I also am dispatched to calls in the moment as well.

Aliah Wright:
How will you and officers who are not social workers work together on calls?

Heather Burzynski:
So within my position, I work with two specific behavioral health officers, who are pretty extensively trained on mental health in their jobs. But besides those two officers, Green Bay police department has 77 officers that are CIT trained. So it's Community Crisis Intervention team. So those officers have gone through a week long training on elderly and mental health, and anyone considered a vulnerable population. So even when I'm working with patrol officers, a lot of them are CIT trained. So they come in with a mental health background and knowledge.

Aliah Wright:
And how long have you been working in this role?

Heather Burzynski:
So this role, I'm the first person in this role for Green Bay, and it started in June. So we are going on about seven months now.

Aliah Wright:
Wow. Really recent.

Heather Burzynski:
Yeah. Yeah, and we're the fourth team in Wisconsin to have specific officers and the clinician paired together. I think some of the other cities are Madison, Milwaukee and Wausau, and then Green Bay is number four. So this is relatively new in the state of Wisconsin.

Aliah Wright:
Are the other clinicians you work with who are also social workers?

Heather Burzynski:
So I'm the only social worker in this role. The two officers I work with, they're behavioral health officers. They were just regular patrol officers who expressed an interest in mental health. They went through the training and then have gone through even further training beyond the CIT. They had to apply, go through that whole process, and they are strictly mental health officers. They don't do any patrol work anymore.

Aliah Wright:
Heather, how might having a social worker on the force make the work of law enforcement officers easier?

Heather Burzynski:
I personally am able to streamline the process, which makes it easier on everyone involved, especially the client. I respond out to calls in the moment, the person doesn't have to repeat their story which can be retraumatizing. They don't have to be taken somewhere else. We can get all of the work that needs to be done, there on the call. And that makes it less stressful for the clients as well.

Another benefit is I'm actually hired through the county, so I have access to all of that information. Whether or not a client already has a case manager, I can find that out while on the call, or call their case manager and the case manager can respond. There's so many benefits to having a social worker in law enforcement. Law enforcement, they have that special training, a lot of them for mental health, but the truth is that they're not social workers. So I have a different training, they have a different training and there's benefits to each. But it's much more trauma-informed, I think, to have a social worker partnered with law enforcement.

Aliah Wright:
Why are you interested in this type of work in this arena?

Heather Burzynski:
Well, my interest has always been in mental health, and I think this position was just new and exciting, and it was a chance to do better in the community. It's not something that is common, but I'm trying to get it out there, because the more that I'm in the role, the more that I see how good it is. My background is also in criminal justice and that kind of played in it as well as corrections, so I saw all different sides of it, and I want to try to prevent people from getting involved in that aspect of corrections and criminal justice.

Aliah Wright:
Now, you mentioned your background and how you got involved in this work. How does a social worker get into this type of field? What kinds of backgrounds or interests are helpful do you think?

Heather Burzynski:
I think that substance abuse is a big thing, just because there tends to be a lot of [inaudible] and mental health and substance abuse, especially in the Midwest. So I have a previous background with crisis and I think that that helped a lot coming into the role of knowing the state statutes that apply up a doubt definitely help. Mental health helps a lot, having a knowledge of the criminal justice system helps. It depends, even with different backgrounds. I think different people could bring different things to the role. So it would be beneficial for almost anyone to get involved. I know in this position they did require the master's degree and they did require the substance abuse, and that was just the baseline. And then from there, whatever extra you bring is just a bonus.

Aliah Wright:
And Heather, is there anything else you'd like our listeners to know?

Heather Burzynski:
It's certainly challenging. I go home a lot of the days and I am just mentally drained. One of the biggest challenges that I face is with HIPAA, because social workers are bound so much by HIPAA. But that's not the case with law enforcement. So I'm not allowed to tell my partners a lot of things. I can't update them on situation. So I think that's the biggest challenge we run into so far, because there's just two different standards of confidentiality.

Some days are definitely difficult, but I think the majority of the days I go home feeling like I made a difference, whether the person believes so or not at the time. I think that this is just catching on. We've gone to different states for training. We were recently in Arlington, Massachusetts, learning from their team. We're trying to go to Tucson in the spring to learn from their team. So it's definitely taking an effect all over the country, and I think it's a great position and it's challenging, but it's definitely needed, just all around.

Aliah Wright:
So it's starting to spread to other states nationwide? And then by you going and looking at what other people are doing in other states, that probably, I would have guessed, helps inform what you do, too?

Heather Burzynski:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I know a bunch of other places within Wisconsin are kind of watching our team to see how successful it may or may not be, to see if they should implement it in their area as well. So right now it's a lot of data tracking and just showing how successful this team is. But even beyond the data and the numbers, which are important, we're seeing an effect in the community as well. And that's just so rewarding.

Aliah Wright:
When you say you're seeing an effect in the community, what type effect you are you talking about?

Heather Burzynski:
So, we are seeing the number of emergency detentions go down by quite a bit, and we're seeing more voluntary hospitalizations go up. So that means we're not taking people's rights away, but these individuals are getting the help that they need without that happening.

Aliah Wright:
Listeners, we'll be right back.

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Aliah Wright:
Heather, can you give a specific example of a case that you've handled recently that demonstrated the value of having a social worker embedded in the police department?

Heather Burzynski:
If someone is on a mental health commitment of sorts, they're required to take their medication. When they don't take their medication, we see a decompensation in that. Where a lot of their behaviors, if you're not well-trained, might appear to be more criminal than mental health.

So recently we had someone who was on a commitment, stopped taking their medication and was doing some things that were kind of dangerous, such as walking in the middle of the street, hitting cars with their hands, and just doing bizarre behaviors. And I'm able to listen to the law enforcement radio and hear the calls that are going out in real-time as it's happening. So I was able to look up the name and see that they had a case manager within the county. So I called their social worker. The social worker responded out to the scene with law enforcement. The social worker was able to do what we call a "return from conditional," so they put the person back into an inpatient hospital where they were able to get restarted on their medication and get back on track. Whereas if that didn't happen, the person might've just been taken to jail. Where they likely wouldn't have been taking their medication; they would have just been released, and then the cycle would have just repeated itself.

Aliah Wright:
Listeners, we want to thank you so much for joining us. And Heather, thank you for being on our show today.

Heather Burzynski:
Thank you for having me.

Aliah Wright:
And thank you for responding to our request on social media to do this. I think that the work that you're doing is just amazing.

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