Crow Wing County senior managers are comparing notes on how to provide support for employees who’ve experienced trauma on the job.
County Administrator Tim Houle said Tuesday, Feb. 25, employees across multiple departments experience trauma to varying degrees. This includes law enforcement officers responding to crash scenes, child protection workers reviewing photos of injuries inflicted by abusers, and even front desk staff subjected to aggressive behavior from taxpayers.
“We’re becoming more sensitive to the impacts that has on our employees,” Houle told the county board during its meeting. “If you think about it, we are asking people to be traumatized. We’re asking them to go towards the trauma, not away from the trauma. The rest of us have the good fortune, thankfully, of being able to run away from the trauma.”
Houle said research is increasingly showing the impact of traumatic events is unavoidable, affecting some more than others but carrying an effect to some degree.
“We’re just becoming, as an organization, more sensitive to where is it that we are expecting folks to endure trauma as an everyday part of their jobs and those who would maybe episodically expose themselves to trauma,” Houle said. “What do we do for our employees? I don’t think we have the answer to that yet but we are comparing notes about what different departments are doing.”
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These discussions are expected to assist in developing an organization-wide approach to trauma response, he added. Houle said an increasing number of jurisdictions are investing in ongoing mental health support for law enforcement officers in particular, known as a “check-up from the neck up.”
Houle appealed to Commissioner Paul Koering for his take on the matter. For about a decade through the end of 2014, Koering ran the body transport service for Crow Wing County. This required him to respond to traumatic deaths to collect bodies and bring them to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy.
“Law enforcement sees a lot of bad stuff. I know that if somebody said, ‘I want you to do what you were doing before,’ I wouldn’t want to do it anymore,” Koering said. “It was really taxing. It’s hard to explain how it is. It’s always there.”
CHELSEY PERKINS may be reached at 218-855-5874 or chelsey.perkins@brainerddispatch.com . Follow on Twitter at twitter.com/DispatchChelsey .
