Drug Endangered Children 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 Stacee Reed. Stacee is the director of DEC Network Development for the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children. In addition to working with the affiliated state and tribal DEC alliances, Stacee also trains professionals on topics involving child welfare and interagency collaboration. Stacee has a master’s in social work and spent a number of years as a child protection safety specialist for the Colorado Department of Human Services, as well as serving as the associate ombudsman for the Office of Colorado’s Child Protection Ombudsman. Thank you, Stacee, for joining us today. With a background in child welfare, you must have seen the impact that substance abuse can have on children first hand. But what was it that inspired you to move from working directly with children to more globally helping multiple disciplines work together to address this challenge? Stacee Reed 01:03 Well thank you, Deborah, for having me. That’s an interesting question. I probably have hours on this. I’ve always loved working directly with children and families, and it was very difficult for me to leave doing that. Like I’m sure you know, conducting child abuse and neglect investigations is also a very difficult job. I saw horrific things done to children every day—horrible abuse and neglect, fatalities, substance abuse, domestic violence, and so on. I think I began to realize that I wanted to change the system and make it better for children and families. That was a passion of mine, and it was difficult to do where I was at. So as I moved up to the state level with a couple different positions and did more oversight of programs and reviews of how child welfare was doing investigations and cases, I began to see more of a global picture of what was happening in the state I was working in. And with that came more of an understanding of what I thought we needed to do, and that was change multiple systems and not just the child welfare system. I thought that that should actually be everybody’s responsibility, that children should be everybody’s responsibility. So with that, I also became more knowledgeable about how I could help, and in my mind that was what I needed to do at that time. So I think with that in mind, that was what I needed to do and could no longer be me just working to change child welfare. It was actually me working with other people to assist in changing not only their discipline but multiple disciplines. So more of that is systems change and not a system change. That in my mind was the only way were going to make lives better for children, and that was really my reasoning for doing that. And working for National DEC has been a wonderful experience, because I’m actually able to do this at a national level as well as working with folks within their states and local communities in order to do this. I believe that I’m making a difference in the lives of children though professionals and through various disciplines by assisting them in educating and working with professionals on drug endangered children as well as on that collaboration piece. That’s my passion, and for me, that’s been a truly amazing experience. Deborah 03:06 So you serve as the Director of Network Development for DEC. But what exactly does that mean? Are there smaller alliances at the state or local level that are affiliated with National DEC? Stacee 03:18 Yes there is. My job at National DEC is to assist folks in the development of state, tribal, and local alliances around the nation. This means providing training around drug endangered children as well as providing training and guidance as to how to actually do this—how to set alliances up, how to get them started, how to make them sustainable, how that’s supposed to look within different states, different areas, that kind of thing. But it’s also my job to conduct training where needed, produce documents and publications, provide technical assistance, provide updated information. So it’s really a team effort because none of us at National DEC can do our jobs alone. We all work together on training and working with our alliances to provide them assistance that they need to help them get started and to keep them going. So currently we have 27 alliances under National DEC, and these include state alliances within the United States, one tribal alliance that encompasses all of the tribes within that one state, and then an alliance in Canada that also includes one province so it’s not the whole of Canada. Among these 27 alliances, there are even more localized alliances, which could either be a local community, a tribe, or a region within that state or within that alliance. But then we also have local and tribal alliances within states that we don’t have state level alliances in. So the number of local alliances or the numbers of local and tribal alliances that we have are numerous at this point. But we do assist in the development of those as well. Deborah 04:51 All of you at National DEC often talk about the DEC approach, which focuses on collaboration across disciplines to better meet the needs of children. As a former child protective services professional who’s now been working side by side with some former law enforcement professionals, why do you think this sort of collaboration is often so difficult to achieve? Stacee 05:12 I think it boils down to a couple of things. First of all, each discipline is so very different. We have different personalities, different way we see things, different way we do things. We are all different kinds of people. I’m not law enforcement for a reason, and law enforcement, they’re not child welfare for a reason. We’re usually in the disciplines that fit our personality and who we are. So I think that’s one of the things that make it very challenging within these disciplines, or within each of our disciplines—we have competing goals. I don’t have the same goal as a child welfare worker that law enforcement has. So when we get together on scene to actually conduct a child abuse and neglect investigation together, we are looking at things very differently and have different goals. My goal is to make sure that children are safe. And law enforcement’s goal is to make sure the community is safe, and they focus on charges and doing that type of investigation. So they’re very different, and that can be very frustrating, and we have to find a common ground in order to be able to work together. That common ground really is what’s in the best interest of children and families. Some of the collaboration pieces are also that we have different types of relationship issues and persons. And basically, what I mean by that is that we have different personalities and different biases that play a part in how we interact with each other. And those can also make it very difficult for that collaboration piece. Another example would be that we all have different control issues. What I mean by that is when we are investigating child abuse and neglect or when we’re coming together in regards to drug endangered children, law enforcement and child welfare both want to control the investigation—it’s my investigation, no it’s your investigation. We both want to do it our way, because we think our way is the best way or that it’s the better way. But what we know that—when we do come together and we collaborate, is that we have better information, we have better outcomes not only for our goals and our discipline but for children as well. So something else that also, I think, comes to play within collaboration is that we all have institutionalized feelings and beliefs about other disciplines. We’re often taught when we first start in a discipline that other disciplines are not as knowledgeable as us, may not be as helpful, or that person over in that department is not as helpful, or they just don’t like us, they don’t understand what we do. So we tend to have those biases and those institutionalized feelings for many, many, many, many years. And that impedes good collaboration unless we are able to work through some of those things. I think another thing that impedes really good collaboration is the fact that a lot of people don’t understand what collaboration is. When we are training on collaboration around the nation, what we are finding is that people are really doing networking, or coordinating, or cooperating with each other. But when we define collaboration as the exchange of information, the altering of activities, the sharing of resources, and the enhancement of a capacity of another for the mutual benefit of all to achieve a common purpose, I think we look out into the crowd and people are like, “Oh that’s not what we do.” So it’s really trying to educate people as to what true collaboration is. It’s also getting them to understand where are you professionally? Are you an agency or a discipline or a person that is really just networking or coordinating with other people and other disciplines? And how do we get folks to get to that collaboration piece? That’s a huge part of our training. We get multiple disciplines together so we can sit down and have those conversations together as to, going forward, what does collaboration look like? We know that it’s challenging, it’s going to be challenging. We’re going to have ups and downs and hills and valleys. But we know in the end that collaboration is possible. And we want them to talk about how to get there, because we don’t want people to leave feeling like this is never going to happen because we know it’s possible and that it’s also in the best interest of drug endangered children. Deborah 09:14 So you sometimes co-lead these trainings with your colleague Eric Nation, who’s a retired law enforcement officer. Have you guys found that it makes a difference to have both of you leading the trainings on this cross-discipline collaboration? Stacee 09:28 Yes, absolutely. So Eric and I have been training together for several years, but we’ve also been training separate from one another on our own as well for various trainings. So we have experience in the perspective of the reaction of folks from when we train together with two disciplines and when we just train with just one. And I think that both ways are great, because it definitely gets the information out there for folks. But what is unique about training with both law enforcement and child welfare together as a team is that we can stand up there together, law enforcement and child welfare both having many, many problems amongst ourselves over many, many years, and we can train and give examples from what we’ve experienced personally in the field and what we’ve heard from professionals around the country. We can truly stand up and show that the collaboration can happen. We can show collaboration happening as we are actually training. And when we are answering questions and those kinds of things from folks, we can give two different perspectives, and that’s okay. And I think it’s really valuable for them to see both perspectives, but in the end, we come together for drug endangered children, and I think that that’s great. I don’t want to be law enforcement and I don’t want Eric to be child welfare. We both want to come with those different perspectives and to be able to stand up and train and give people a more in-depth training or—a training with more depth. I just think it’s a wonderful process. What we have come to realize is that, in my mind, I think that it’s the most effective way to train folks as to how this collaboration works across disciplines when you can stand up there with somebody who you may not have gotten along with their discipline or that person. But you can stand up there and come together as a team, as an alliance, and actually provide information and really great examples. I think it’s an effective and a really unique way to train. Deborah 11:19 Thank you so much for your time and expertise today, Stacee. Stacee 11:23 Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Voiceover: Beat Exit 11:26 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 11:42 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. 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