"GIVE US SOME CREDIT!"
911 telecommunicators do indeed deserve credit for the great job you do most the time with calls from children in crisis. Yet managing these calls falls in the low incidence/high risk category. And in the last two years the U.S. news media have brought enormous exposure to a few very unfortunate 911 calls from children in which death and tragedy resulted from call management errors. In other cases, such errors were not linked to death but did likely leave the child caller with more severe psychological trauma (by discontinuing contact rather than offering continued emotional support after first responders were successfully dispatched).

The media spotlight continues to hover over 911 Centers placing nearly zero-tolerance pressure on directors, managers and front line dispatchers to excel in effectively processing calls from children. How will you and your center respond?

Your Choice: Protest the Criticism or Pursue Best Practice...
On a personal level it is natural for any devoted worker to become defensive when she or her profession is accused of substandard practice resulting in tragedy. And the media coverage of these extraordinary 911 failures likely created an unfair public impression of the state of our nation's 911 performance overall. But amidst the heat of public scrutiny and increasing legal liabilities, there is an opportunity and a responsibility here for 911 centers: you can accelerate your efforts to assure Best Practice in managing calls from children in crisis--become leaders in the field!

How? By seeking answers to a few extremely critical questions: For example...

• What is the actual failure rate for 911 telecommunicators with crisis calls from children to our centers?
• What factors lead to such failures?
•  What are the essential objectives every telecommunicator should accomplish for best practice in management of calls from children in crisis?
• What specific knowledge and skills are needed to achieve these objectives?
• Are there certain personal characteristics that place telecommunicators at higher risk for failure in managing crisis calls from children?
• Should your center design or adopt a mandatory Best Practice Protocol for managing child crisis calls? (And will protocol use provide greater safety for the caller, the telecommunicator, and the 911 center?)
  

All these questions should lead you to asking one more:

"Where can we get answers to these questions, and the training we need to succeed?" You'll find the answers In 911 Training Institute's course, Building LifeBridges to Children At Risk. And you will gain the state-of-the-art skills and knowledge you need to succeed in achieving Best Practice in the management of child crisis calls.

Here is a Brief Course Outline...

1. Overview of Children who Call in Crisis: types and frequency of crisis calls from children to America's 911 Centers
2. Psychological factors influencing call outcomes:

A. The child's mental state at time of call: the role of dissociation in survival
B. What you should know about the caller's emotional state: "appearances can be deceiving" indeed and give rise to dispatch error. (Research findings on the Emotional Content and Cooperation Scale.)
C. The telecommunicator's mental state in response to the child's presentation of need: misinterpretations; natural psychological defenses in adult responses to child suffering: denial, minimization, rationalization as means of comforting; loss of objectivity; activation of personal trauma triggers
D. Identifying personal dispatcher characteristics that predict mental errors processing calls from children in crisis

3. High Profile Case Studies:

A. Exploring the psychology of 911 successes and failures in child crisis calls: "What went right and what went awry?"
B. Key elements of successful 911 call-taker/child communication
C. Assessing and managing risks to the child caller

4. Balancing Art and Science: Getting Equipped with the LifeBridges Child Call Protocol

A. Protocol Limits: The invaluable role of personal empathy, intuition and personal judgment in Task 1: Connecting
B. The crucial role of Child Call Protocols for Best Practice
C. Getting familiar with the LIfeBridges Child Call Protocol: key principles and the process
D. Applying the Protocol in High-Risk Call Scenarios: real life practice in Task 2: Assessing and Task 3: Intervening
E. Local autonomy in designing and adopting protocols for Best Practice

5. Tools for Managing the 911 Telecommunicator's Personal Distress and Achieving Peak Psychological Performance
6. Team Work in the 911 Center during the Child Crisis Call
7. "After the Child Crisis Call"-- Post-call processes:

A. Telecommunicator Debriefing: to decrease psychological effects of Secondary Traumatization on the professional
B. Performance Assessment: of professional empathy, intuition, and personal judgment, and protocol use to support continuous quality improvement toward Best Practice 

Copyright notice:  please note that the information contained in this outline is copyrighted and constitutes intellectual property. It may not be transmitted in any form for any other than for informational purposes without prior permission of the author under penalty of law. 

Cost for this 8 hour course: 190.00 per student
Host this class for increased value. See our Hosting & Sponsoring page by clicking here.

Visit our GuestBook to request more information or contact us at:

911 Training Institute
Info@911Training.net
231.622.1600
704 Petoskey Street
Petoskey, MI 49770