Recognizing and responding to Traumatized Youth: preliminary results and implications for police trainings

ABSTRACT

This research study analyzed 944 pre-training and 871 post-training survey responses from a youth-specific in-service police training. Before training, police largely had negative views on youth, but are interested in improving their knowledge and interaction skills with youth. Post-training, police demonstrated significant improvement in their self-skill ratings and acknowledged various behavior-related changes they planned to make when interacting with youth. Patterns in responses also emerged based on officer characteristics. Training appears helpful in changing youth-related knowledge, beliefs, and skills in officers and to match the expectations or desires of officers receiving the training. The results from these training surveys highlight unique opportunities for future investigation and practice, such modifications to training content and delivery, and for policy initiatives, including consistently integrating youth training into police education.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• police
• training
• trauma
• development

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participating division of police and its officers who worked closely with researchers to ensure access to the data and provided clarity throughout the data analysis. The authors would also like to thank the local providers and trainers and the county mental health agency that provided input during the training and analysis process. The time and assistance of all of these partners was invaluable. Lastly, the authors would like to thank Lisa Kollins, Kathryn Liebler, and Mary Kate Ford for their contribution to data cleaning and coding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Post-Training

How many years have you worked in law enforcement? Open-ended short response

What is your current role? Options: school resources officer, command staff, patrol officer, community relations officer, other (with open-ended write-in)

Overall, what concepts in the training were helpful to you? Open-ended long response

How would you improve this training? Open-ended long response

What are you going to change as a result of this training? Open-ended long response

How useful will this training be for my future interactions with youth? Options: extremely, very, somewhat, not useful

Please rate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements (4-Point Likert Scale (strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree)):

Adolescents’ brains make them perceive and react differently than adult brains.

Adolescents need to be held to different standards than adults are.

It is important for someone in my role to build relationships with youth.

Adolescents’ racial and cultural background don’t affect the way they respond to police.

I have the skills necessary for interacting effectively with traumatized youth

I feel equipped to help youth regulate their behavior

I feel equipped to prevent youth from overreacting in tense situations

I feel equipped to recognize and work with you who have experienced trauma

The Behavior-Language-Timing idea will help me be more effective in my interactions with youth

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the George Gund Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Jessica Salley Riccardi

Jessica Riccardi is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication Sciences in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. She works as a graduate policy research assistant at the Schubert Center for Child Studies. Her research addresses long-term outcomes for children with brain injury. She aims to improve the application of research evidence to practice and policy to improve outcomes for all children.

Gabriella Celeste

Gabriella Celeste, JD, is the Policy Director of the Schubert Center for Child Studies. She is also a Co-Director of the Childhood Studies Program and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. She works to build partnerships that promote effective public policy and practice for the well-being of children and adolescents.

Anastasia Dimitropoulos

Anastasia Dimitropoulos, Ph.D, is the Director of the Schubert Center for Child Studies. She is also a Co-Director of the Childhood Studies Program and an Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. Her research focuses on neurodevelopmental disorders with regard to their impact on cognition and behavior.