The law enforcement groups are usually subjected to a variety of harsh work environments which may work by spurring a lot of stress. The stress is compounded further by the fact that they are expected to fulfill their duties with exact precision with no room for error. These expectations which emanate from their supervisors and the general public may drive these law enforcement officers to the extremes. As such it is no surprise to hear heartbreaking news of officers who end up taking their lives, those of their colleagues or family members. The decision to reach this point is fuelled by the fact that such police teams face a lot of frustrations and with no one to reach out to the only option that is available to them is to take such steps which leaves a question on how this issue should be approached. It is for this reason that this paper is written to find ways to help the law enforcement officers to cope and manage their stress levels before they reach a breaking point.
Rationale
Police usually bear a complicated responsibility of offering security services to the civilians by exposing themselves to the same risks they are protecting the civilians from. According to Evans, Pistrang & Billings (2013), these police officers are always in the line of danger ranging from battlefronts, gangsters, terrorists, and disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. As such they tend to experience the most horrifying of situations including mutilated, charred and crushed bodies in disaster zones. Others witness their colleagues die in battlefronts, and still, they are expected to go on with their work. What this does to them is to create indelible and horrific images that keep on popping up in their sleep. Consequently, they experience stress build up over time which pays a critical role in bringing frustrations which if not monitored can lead to suicides and homicides among the police.
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As it is, there exists little effort by the concerned parties to create room to offer counseling services to the law enforcement officers. The reason for this could be the fact that police are viewed as strong-willed individuals who have what it takes to get into a disheartening situation without becoming affected. Additionally, police officers usually get tough training sessions before joining the various police departments which is supposed to toughen them up. It is this assumption that police are energetic individuals that leads to most agencies to forget that they are also human beings who are emotional and who can be affected by the pain of others (Evans, Pastring & Billings, 2013). They are not soulless and indeed, they pass through the same issues that other civilians pass through. It is through this realization that a stress management team should be formed to cater forte emotional needs of police teams. It is believed that the police require a crying shoulder where they can narrate their frustrations to each other to find the strength to move on. Sharing horrifying experiences will be a better way of handling stress levels instead of leaving the police officers to their own devices and bear the brunt of it.
Objectives
The goals for forming stress management team in police work are numerous seeing that police are susceptible to high-stress levels due to the nature of their work. The objectives are as follows:
Assess stress levels among police officers from different departments to establish which branch of the police teams is more susceptible to stress levels. The reason/n for doing this is the fact that there are some police departments which have simpler workloads meaning that they are not exposed to many conflicts.
Come up with strategies to inform the police teams on the formation of stress management team through reaching out to their supervisors.
Determine the source of stress for the police officers to come up with a working formula which focuses on those specific areas.
Come up with learning materials and resources to facilitate the process of helping the police teams to deal with their stress levels
Appoint individuals including tutors and facilitators who will be in charge of the whole operation to ensure its success.
Conduct a pilot study to establish the viability of initiating the group on stress management.
Come up with strategies to manage workplace stress among police officers and help them create relationships that are more positive with their family members.
Practical Considerations
When setting up a stress management team in police work, there is a need to consider some important things to ensure the success of the proposed interventions. The primary considerations that this proposal will put in mind is the membership, meeting times, venue for the meeting, the frequency of sessions, duration of the group, number of facilitators and ways monitoring of progress. The proposal is that the group should have between fifteen to twenty-five members to enhance the effectiveness of the counseling groups. The number is good at it will ensure that every member of the group is addressed in every sitting. Additionally, this is a comfortable number as it brings about the much-needed group diversity and dynamics, which will play a significant role in enhancing the effectiveness of the counseling. The members will be drawn from various police departments including the military, homeland security, the army, prisons department, fire department among others. Doing this will create a myriad of experiences which will go a long way in diffusing the stress levels among the various classes of police. The venue of the meeting will be a central location where all the members will agree to ease access.
Stress management team meetings will last for three months where the group will meet twice a week for two hours. The decision is because the police officers are engaged most of the time and this decision will be reached after all the participants have requested permission from their supervisors to attend the group sessions. After every session, the officers will be required to fill attendance forms as well as give feedback on the impact of the group sessions to validate its effectiveness. These facilitators will review the filed reports in each officer’s file to be reviewed at the end of the session. Most importantly, the officers will be exposed to debriefing sessions especially those officers who have undergone through tougher experiences. Moe so there will be a random aptitude test to see how the officers would react to stressing situations in the course of their work. The sessions will be handled by three facilitators who will manage different aspects until the end of the sessions. It is believed that the group sessions will yield the much-needed results and a successful completion of the sessions will pave the way for creation of more groups in the future.
Procedures for Meeting the Set Objectives
The team objectives which have been clearly outlined will require whole episode to ensure that they are met satisfactorily to achieve the desired outcomes. Assessment of the stress levels among the police team will need review of the literature to find out what research statistics reveal about this issue. It is true to say that much research has gone into this social problem and it would not be hard to come up with the real figure on the ground to help in the selection of the members. After assessing the stress levels among the police officers, it will be crucial to come up with strategies to inform the cops on the formation of the group. The communication will be done through their supervisors by way of emails and face to face conversations. This procedure will be substantial since it is these supervisors who will issue permits to the officers as well as explain why these sessions are important to them. Determination of source of stress for the police officers is an objective which will be met through questionnaires and interviews in prior research to come up with a working formula.
The group sessions will be in need of learning materials and resources to enhance its effectiveness. To acquire the materials, the group facilitators will research to determine the kind of materials that they can use in these group sessions. More so the facilitators will work together to come up with learning resources which may be provided by the various police departments or sourced from the community. These support materials may be in the form of charts and resource persons who have undergone and dealt with their stress effectively. Appointment of tutors and facilitators will be based on merit by considering the background of the instructors. Only the trainers and facilitators who have worked in stress management teams will be viable for selection to enhance effectiveness. These trainers will be located using referrals by groups which have undergone such sessions before. Most importantly the facilitators will be vetted beforehand to make sure that only the best interact with the police teams. The procedures for coming up with strategies for helping the officers cope with their stress will be realized deep into the sessions when the tutors have established the officer's stress levels. Involvement of family and friends at the end of the sessions will be a significant boost to the facilitators’ efforts.
Evaluation of the Group Proposal
The team conducting the group sessions on stress management team should come up with assessment methods to establish whether the objectives they set out to achieve have been achieved or not. The evaluation will be done by focusing on the set goals as well as the procedures set out to accomplish these aims. The facilitators will have employed various strategies in communicating on the need for police officers to attend the group sessions mostly through writing letters to their supervisors. To evaluate whether they have succeeded in getting enough quorum, they will determine the number they target to get with the number of volunteers. More volunteers for the sessions will mean that their strategy has worked while a lower number of members turning up for the meetings will indicate that their strategy failed to work. Additionally, the main objective for coming with this proposal was to help the police teams deal with their stress levels to a greater extent.
The team will evaluate whether the strategies used that is the group sessions have worked through perusing through the filed information right from the start to the completion of the group sessions. The constant feedback from the participating members will inform the facilitators as to whether the police perceptions have changed over time or not. Additionally, the moderators can make use of questionnaires or interview schedules to find out more about the impact of the whole process. These interview schedules and questionnaires may be given to the immediate supervisors, colleagues, friends, and families of the participating members to get their feedback on the perceived changes in the members. Such information will help the team to evaluate whether the group sessions are worthwhile or not to know what needs to be done if similar meetings are to be organized later.
The following questions will be formulated to access the success of the proposal:
Did the team achieve the targeted quorum?
How was the rate of attendance to the sessions?
Did the participants’ attitude change over time?
What responses is the team getting from the participant's families, colleagues, and supervisors?
Did the participants report a positive change or not:
Recommendations
With the planned group sessions on stress management team in police work, it would be advisable to take into consideration several issues to ensure that the sessions pick up and prove profitable to the participants. The objectives must be clear right from the start to increase the chances of success. Additionally, the team must put into place the strategies which will be effective, observable and measurable for achieving the set objective to a greater extent. Moreover, the right channels should be used to inform the concerned authorities about the planned sessions to avoid conflict of interest which may jeopardize the whole affair. In addition to these, there is need to set several things in order such as the venue, duration of the entire session, number of meetings to be held as well as the number of facilitators to avoid a collision. The setting of such vital details will go a long way in preventing delays which may compromise on the quality of the sessions. More so there is need to come up with evaluation methods to determine whether the proposed objectives were met or not. The team may take up to one month to prepare the required prerequisites before starting on the initial sessions. One month is considered an ample time seeing that the team has a lot of consulting and preparation to do before the sessions can pick up in full gear.
Reference
Evans, R, Pistrang, N. & Billings, J. (2013). Police officers’ experiences of supportive and unsupportive social interactions following traumatic incidents. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 4 (2013).
