Core Drug Endangered Children Training October 2014 Voiceover: Beat Intro 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Deborah Spence 00:08 Hello and welcome. My name Deborah Spence and, on behalf of the COPS Office, I would like to introduce you to Lieutenant Eric Nation. Lieutenant Nation began his career in law enforcement in Iowa in 1995 with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office and served as the commander of the Mid-Iowa Narcotics Enforcement Task Force East Side from 2007 to 2012. In 2012, he joined the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children, where he is the Director of Training and Development. As a certified core DEC trainer, Lieutenant Nation has trained thousands of professionals across Iowa and the United States and is here to discuss his work with drug endangered children. Thank you, Eric, for taking the time. Can you tell us a little bit about National DEC as an organization? Lieutenant Eric Nation 00:52 Yes. National DEC, also known as the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children, is a national non- profit organization that receives its primary funding from the COPS Office and BJA. National DEC is made up of 25 state alliances, one state tribal alliance, and one provincial alliance in Ontario, Canada, as well as numerous local and tribal alliances throughout the country. National DEC conducts monthly webinars on a variety of topics to include drug trends, trauma, medical, prevention, mental health, and behavioral health topics, and many more. All of our webinars are recorded and stored for future viewing on the National DEC website. And National DEC has currently over 1,400 resources on the website on a variety of topics for viewing. National DEC also provides training and technical assistance across the country to state, local, and tribal communities. Deborah 01:47 So listeners can access National DEC’s core DEC training both through your website as well as ours here at the COPS Office, and it’s something that the COPS Office originally sponsored the development of, but just briefly for those that may be unfamiliar with it, what is the core DEC training about and who can take it? Eric 02:04 So the National DEC's core DEC training is a community-based awareness training that is intended to raise the awareness about the risk faced by drug endangered children and to highlight the benefits of collaborative response. The training is beneficial for any professional or community members that work with children and families in any capacity. Some of the main objectives of the training—the core DEC training—is about identifying drug endangered children or children whose well-being is at risk because of the caretaker's involvement in illicit drugs or substance abuse, commonly known as children plus drugs equal risk. The training also raises awareness regarding the problem of drug endangered children so that professionals interacting with these victims recognize the need to facilitate the multi-disciplinary approach and coordinated response to better meet the needs of these children. And a couple of other topics or objectives that we try to meet with this is—the training also describes the opportunity to identify children that are living in dangerous drug environments and encourage intervention at the earliest point possible when endangerment is suspected to reduce both physical and psychological harm to the children. The training highlights the multidisciplinary response that considers the unique and often limited resources within many of the communities and how these resources can be coordinated and applied in the manner that allows the children to receive better care and better services. A lot of the training is based on true life examples, and it’s got extensive discussion around the collaborative DEC approach. Deborah 03:44 So when you’re delivering the core DEC training, you mention the real-life examples. I’ve heard you and other trainers talk about the “aha” moments in their careers when they realized what they were missing with regards to drug endangered children. So you spent a lot of your career in narcotics enforcement. Did you have an “aha” moment yourself that you can tell us about? Eric 04:05 I did. I actually was attending the National DEC conference down in Kansas City, Missouri, and I was begged to go listen to a speaker by the name of Nick Taylor while I was at the conference. Nick Taylor spoke on substance use or substance abuse and how it related to adults and children. This is normally a topic I would never have listened to, and DEC was all new to me at this time. So I went to this breakout session that Nick Taylor was doing. During that session, I was probably not the best audience member; I was playing on my phone and things like that. Nick Taylor asked me a question—out of the entire audience—and asked me if I thought I had a role in a drug endangered child’s life. And that was the first time that I had really thought about having an impact in a child’s life other than what we normally get from a law enforcement standpoint, which was make arrests, investigations that were based on drug and asset forfeitures, and things like that. And it really made me think about how I could impact the life of a child and maybe change the multigenerational cycle of abuse and neglect. After that moment, I brought that “aha” moment back to our local community in Jasper County, Iowa, and began starting our local DEC alliance. Deborah 05:30 So you also mention that National DEC advocates for collaboration across disciplines to help meet the needs of DEC children. It seems to me that this would be a smart approach to many public safety problems that communities face. So in your experience with trainings, what do you think makes this sort of collaboration so difficult? Eric 05:52 So collaboration is kind of an interesting word to me. For years I had thought I was collaborating. But the term collaboration is often used interchangeably with other terms such as networking, cooperation, and coordination. And when you actually look at the definition of collaboration, it’s the exchange of information altering that of activities, the sharing of resources, and the enhancement of the capacity of another for the mutual benefit of all and to achieve a common purpose. So when you really look at the definition of collaboration, it makes you wonder at the time when we all thought we were collaborating and working together, were we truly networking, cooperating, or just coordinating efforts? And as you get into collaboration, it becomes very challenging. The reasons for that, in my mind are: you have competing goals. So you have law enforcement looking for the arrest and drug seizures and asset forfeitures. You have child welfare looking for the safety of the child. You have prevention and behavioral mental health professionals looking for rehabilitation and things like that. So you definitely have competing goals. There’s obviously relationship issues that come with that. My relationship with child welfare early on in my law enforcement was less than fantastic. We’ve starting using the DEC approach, and my relationship with child welfare became very, very wonderful, and collaborative response definitely helped the way we did business and benefited both the discipline of child welfare and law enforcement, but most importantly the children. Other things that can be challenging with it are the control issues: who has control of the case, differing values—you know, the value that we might have as an individual but not as a system or a discipline, and helplessness, you know that you reach out and you don’t get a response or they didn't answer the question the way you thought they should have. Then one my biggest challenges that I think I faced with collaboration was, once I had my “aha” moment, is that unchanneled passion and energy. So I came back wanting to work together, but I had to mend fences that I had broken down over the years and that unchanneled passion and energy kind of got in the way of myself at times. So we have to remind ourselves that are we doing this for the children and to break this multi- generational cycle of abuse, and that ultimately is the goal. And once we re-focus back to that, collaboration should become easier with that in focus. Deborah 08:26 So as you travel the country to lead core DEC trainings, what is it that you really hope the attendees take away from the sessions? What do you consider a win? Eric 8:37 So for me personally, I think anytime that we get the opportunity to have one person have that “aha” moment, even if it’s one person out of a hundred and we hope for more, I think we’ve got a win. The goal is to raise awareness about the risk faced by the drug endangered children and demonstrating opportunities for an effective, collaborative DEC approach. We hope to change how cases involving drugs and children are handled with the additional information gained from the multi-disciplinary collaboration. More important decisions can be made about what is in the best interest of the drug endangered children and their families. So better outcomes for the children is ultimately the win. Deborah 09:16 Thank you so much for your time and expertise today, Eric. Eric 09:20 Thank you, Deborah. Voiceover: Beat Exit 09:22 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice, COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. Voiceover: Disclaimer 09:38 The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.