Transcript — IACP Webinar: Safeguarding Children of Arrested Parents

May 2019

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Speaker 1: This broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only mode.

Cheri Hoffman: Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. Welcome to our 

webinar, Safeguarding Children of Arrested Parents: Implementing the Model 

Arrest Policy. My name is Cheri Hoffman. I am the chairperson of the 

Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs and I work at the Department of 

Health and Human Services here in Washington, D.C., and in partnership with 

the American Institutes for Research and our partners from the Office of 

Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. We're really excited to bring you 

this information today. So welcome, and I want to give you a little bit of 

background on the working group that I just mentioned and then introduce our 

panelists and we'll get going.

Cheri Hoffman: So, the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs is a collaborative effort 

of over 20 different federal agencies and offices across the whole government 

that have direct youth programming. And back in 2008 under an executive order 

from then president George W. Bush, HHS was asked to chair a working group 

that would bring all of those agencies together and coordinate and collaborate 

to improve youth outcomes.

Cheri Hoffman: We were also tasked to operate a website that would be a one-stop shop for 

information about youth programming and resources across the government. 

And we've been doing that for about the last 10 years at www.youth.gov. And 

also we have just recently relaunched a youth facing portion of that website 

known as Youth Engaged for Change, which you can find at engage.youth.gov. I 

encourage you to go there and get a little bit of a sense of all the things that are 

happening across the federal government for youth. youth.gov is really aimed at 

adults who work with youth. And you can find lots of information there about 

different issues that young people might be facing, resources, we have a funding 

center there where you can learn about opportunities for federal funding and 

information about evidence based programs and all kinds of different things. So, 

check that out.

Cheri Hoffman: This work that we are bringing to you today comes from a partnership that we 

have, as I mentioned with OJJDP, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency 

Prevention. Where as part of youth.gov we host a micro-site on children of 

incarcerated parents. And have had a really robust strong stream of work over 

the past couple of years learning about issues that are particular to children 

who have or have had an incarcerated parent, and really trying to think about 

how we can best serve those young people. What their unique needs are. So 

you can find that website also at youth.gov.

Cheri Hoffman: And we've done a couple of things over the last few years with a listening 

session with about 20 young people who have or have had an incarcerated 

parent. And having an opportunity to hear from them about how that has 

impacted them and what sort of changes and policy changes and practice 

changes would be helpful to them. We've also from that work been able to 
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develop some resources for teachers and for social workers that you would find 

on the Children of Incarcerated Parents micro-site. So I encourage you to take a 

look at that.

Cheri Hoffman: But today we're going to be talking specifically about the issue of arrest and 

how witnessing the arrest influences a young person. And I want to go ahead 

and introduce our panel to you. The folks that we'll be hearing from today all 

have a different angle that they can share their experience with. So we're really 

looking forward to it.

Cheri Hoffman: We'll be starting with Savanna, who is a youth living in New York who 

experienced the arrest of her father. And she is here today to share her 

[inaudible 00:04:06] experience with us, which we really appreciate. So 

welcome Savanna and thank you.

Cheri Hoffman: Juliette-Marie deSousa is a senior researcher at the American Institutes for 

Research, who is our partner in operating youth.gov. And her work focuses on 

social-emotional factors and wraparound services, programs and policies 

necessary to improve outcomes for youth, and a main topic area of her work 

through our working group are these issues pertaining to children of 

incarcerated parents.

Cheri Hoffman: Rebecca Shlaffer is an assistant professor and developmental psychologist at the 

University of Minnesota. Dr. Shlaffer's research focuses on understanding the 

developmental outcomes of children and families with multiple risk factors. 

She's particularly interested in children with parents in prison as well as the 

programs and policies that impact families affected by incarceration.

Cheri Hoffman: Brendan Cox is the former chief of police in Albany, New York who was at the 

forefront of developing and implementing the International Association of 

Chiefs of Police Model Arrest Policy in Albany, and he continues to be an 

advocate for trauma informed practice.

Cheri Hoffman: And Katie Clark is the anti-violence coordinator for the Albany New York Police 

Department. She handles initiatives such as the IAPP Model Arrest Policy and 

something called Handle With Care, which is a collaboration between the police 

force and the school system to support youths who experience a traumatic 

experience outside of school, and bridging what happens at home and school.

Cheri Hoffman: So, this is a great lineup of folks to talk to you about this issue of witnessing 

arrest, and I'm going to hand it over to Juliette-Marie deSousa at AIR to get us 

started. Thanks so much.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Great, thank you Cheri. So as Cheri said, my name is Juliette-Marie deSousa and 

I'm working at the American Institutes for Research. And we're glad to have you 

on today's webinar. We're going to start today with Savanna, who is a young 

lady who we're lucky enough to have on our panel today. And she's willing to 
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share her story with us of what she has experienced. So, Savanna, thank you so 

much for joining us. To start, would you please tell us a little bit about your 

experience in witnessing an arrest? And of course, just a reminder you can share 

what you feel comfortable sharing and leave out anything you don't.[inaudible 

00:06:24]

Savanna: Hi, my name is Savanna and this is a little bit about my personal experience. My 

dad had a warrant for his arrest and the police came to my house while I was 

home on a school break and arrested him. It seemed like there were so many 

police officers were in my house, but my mom said there were only five police 

officers. I remember a woman police officer who was very mean and wouldn't 

let my mom take me out of the apartment or let me say anything to my dad. 

And then another officer said, "Let her come hug her dad so she knows he's 

okay." And I ran hugging him so tight until my mom said I had to let him go.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Well, thank you for sharing that, Savanna. Can you tell us how long you think 

you felt the impact of your father's arrest, and if you still feel that way?

Savanna: I felt this impact for probably the whole time. It was hard dealing with it too.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: And do you still feel the impact? And how did that affect you before? I know you 

mentioned that sometimes you would replay that day over in your head?

Savanna: Yeah, at least until my dad came home a year later. I remember I would be in 

school thinking about it, but when I was home it would just pop into my head 

and make me upset. I hated seeing how rude the police were to my dad.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: And what helped you cope during that and after the arrest?

Savanna: Hugging my dad would help. My mom explaining to me what was going on. I 

would talk to my therapist about my feelings. Talking to my dad every day so I 

knew he was okay. Having people there for me whenever I needed to, like my 

mentor [inaudible 00:08:24].

Juliette-Marie deSousa: That's great to know that you had all of that support with your mom and your 

therapist. And being able to talk to your dad. And then your mentor as well. So, 

those supports sound like they were very helpful for you. Could you share three 

things that maybe could have made the experience different for you?

Savanna: I really wish the police would have been nicer to me. Or not getting held back 

from hugging my dad. Or if they would let me out my house when I was... if they 

would have let me out the house when my mom was trying to get me out.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Okay, yeah. So those are all things that could have made the experience 

different for you. Well, thank you so much Savanna for sharing your story with 

us and starting us off. Hearing your voice on this topic is really helpful for all of 

us.
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Savanna: Thank you.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: And we know you're staying on the webinar. So if folks have questions for you at 

the end we'll be passing those questions on to you to answer. But thank you,

Savanna: Thank you.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Sure. So we know that certain events like this happen. But hearing a firsthand 

account like we just heard from Savanna is really valuable and powerful for 

understanding the impact that an experience like this can have. And 

unfortunately, Savanna's story has played out many times when the parent of a 

child is arrested. Because the arrest of a parent can be a traumatic experience 

and have a traumatic impact on children of all ages, in 2013 the Department of 

Justice announced that the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the 

IACP, along with the Bureau of Justice Assistants which is within the Department 

of Justice that they would develop a model protocol and training on protecting 

the physical and emotional well-being of children when their parents are 

arrested.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: On the IACP website, one can find a toolkit about this Model Arrest Policy. The 

materials available include a policy document, training videos, classroom 

resources such as a facilitator guide and a PowerPoint, a tip sheet, and a 

checklist with items for police officers to consider before arrest, while they're 

preparing to go make that arrest, and then during the arrest. Stuff such as 

looking for signs that a child may be present. Perhaps there's a toy or a coloring 

book that's out in the room that they notice. So there's a lot of materials on that 

website to assist police with learning how to deal with an arrest.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: The importance of this tool is based on the scope of the problem. We know that 

50 to 60% of incarcerated adults are parents. An estimated 2.7 million children 

have a parent who is in prison or jail. And we know that parental incarceration 

rates, especially for mothers has been increasing. We know that nearly 50% of 

children exposed to family violence witness an arrest. And that having an 

incarcerated parent is known to be an adverse childhood experience. An 

adverse childhood experience, or an ACE is the term used to describe all types 

of abuse, neglect and other potentially traumatic experiences that occur to 

people under the age of 18. Adverse childhood experiences have been linked to 

risky health behaviors, chronic health conditions, low life potential, and even 

early death. So, as the number of ACEs increases, so does the risk for these 

outcomes. Therefore, having policies and procedures in place that can reduce 

the likelihood of a child experiencing trauma or an ACE is vital.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: So with that brief introduction to today's topic, I would like to pass this off to Dr. 

Rebecca Shlaffer who's going to tell us more about what the research says. 

Rebecca?
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Dr. Shlaffer: Thanks Juliette. I'm excited to be with you today. I don't want to spend too

much time here reviewing some of the data, but I do think it's important 

context. So what we know, and this is data that comes from the Bureau of 

Justice statistics, in 2007 it was estimated that nearly 1.75 million children had a 

parent incarcerated in a state or federal prison. Between 1991 and mid-year 

2007, parents held in state and federal prisons increased by 79%. And it was 

estimated then that 52% of adults in state prison and 63% of adults in federal 

prison were parents with minor children. Of course, these data reflect only 

parents that were currently incarcerated at the time of the survey. And at this 

point now they're more than a decade old.

Dr. Shlaffer: Unfortunately, we don't have a more recent report from the Bureau of Justice 

Statistics. But strong evidence suggests that millions of children are impacted by 

their parents' incarceration each year. Indeed, more recent data from the 

National Survey of Children's Health estimates that approximately 5 million 

children have experienced the incarceration of a parent that they lived with. 

Either way, it's fair to say that millions of children experience the incarceration 

of their parents, at an experience that is really uniquely American at this point.

Dr. Shlaffer: So, when we think about witnessing a parent's arrest, we know that this can be 

considered an incarceration related experience. Scholars in this area have made 

a distinction between general environmental risks. Things like poverty or parent 

education, homelessness, things that we know are factors associated with one's 

risk for incarceration and also may be related to adverse child outcomes. But we 

also can think about incarceration related experience or incarceration specific 

risk factors. And these may be things like witnessing a parent's criminal activity, 

witnessing a parent's arrest, or witnessing or participating in the court process 

or the parent sentencing. These exposures, again referred to as incarceration 

related experiences are thought to have particularly stressful or traumatic 

experiences for children whose parents who will later go on to be incarcerated.

Dr. Shlaffer: Danielle Dallaire and her colleague have talked about parental arrests 

particularly and they wrote, "The context of parental arrest more so than the 

actual arrest may be particularly frightening for children. And if we can think 

about what's happening in this context of parental arrest, we know there's a lot 

that may be going on, including a child's exposure to criminal activities, 

substance abuse, drugs and alcohol, and the environment in and of itself is 

often chaotic, loud, there's generally a level of unpredictability that the parent's 

have and sometimes the arresting officers and certainly the children experience. 

There may be verbal altercations that happen before and during arrest, as well 

as violence and exposure to weapons." And so, what Dallaire and Wilson mean 

here, right, is that this idea of it's not just the actual arrest, but all of the context 

that may set children up for having poor experiences in this context.

Dr. Shlaffer: So I'm a developmental psychologist which means I have to think about this 

from a lens of children's age and their developmental capacity. And I think this is 

really important to keep in mind when we think about how a parent's arrest
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may affect children. So that data that I've presented on this slide here again 

come from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and reflect the age of children with 

parents that were currently incarcerated in state or federal prison at the time of 

that survey. What you can see here is that approximately 2% of children were 

less than one year old. About 20% are between one and four years old. 30% are 

between the ages of five and nine years old. 32% are between 10 and 14 years 

old. And about 16% are between 15 and 17 years old.

Dr. Shlaffer: If you take this graphic at full what we can see is more than 75% of these kids 

are school age, or between the ages of five and seventeen years. And this 

becomes really important when we think about opportunities for intervention. 

And so as we heard in the beginning, the investment and thinking about 

approaching schools and teachers and having that be one source of support for 

kids who've experienced their parents arrest is really important. Because many 

of these youth are spending substantial portions of their days at school. And the 

arrest of course could bleed over or impact their functioning and their 

experiences at school.

Dr. Shlaffer: So of course, we know that kids have different experiences and understanding 

of something like an arrest or all experiences really, depending on their age and 

their developmental capacities. So consider the differences for example in what 

an infant, let's say a six month old would experience, versus what a sixteen year 

old would experience in terms of a parent's arrest, even if all of the other facts 

about the situation were exactly the same.

Dr. Shlaffer: I like to think about this in considering domains of child development, or things 

that we think about in terms of emotional development, cognitive and language 

development, social development and physical development. And I want to 

walk you all through this slide here a little bit and think about it particularly in 

the context of a child's exposure to their parent's arrest. So when we think 

about emotional development we think about things like emotional expression 

and regulation. So in the context of a parent's arrest this could be a child 

screaming or crying, but of course we know this depends highly on the child's 

age.

Dr. Shlaffer: So again, if we can use that extreme example of what a six month old might 

experience versus what a sixteen year old might experience, right? They both 

may cry in the same situation in terms of the arrest, but the infant is likely going 

to be crying because the auditory stimuli or the noise in the environment is very 

scary, or because they're no longer being held by their primary caregiver. That 

emotional reaction might be very high. We can think about emotional reactivity 

for a sixteen year old too, but it would look quite different of course.

Dr. Shlaffer: When we think about cognitive and language skills what becomes important 

here is in terms of what children understand or what they don't understand 

about the situation. Of course what they may remember, what they have the 

capacity to remember. Because of course we know that young children, while 
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they have memories it often gets held in their being in different ways than older 

kids. And so while a 10 year old may be able to recite all of the experiences of 

what happened when their parent was arrested, a three year old may have very 

different memories and may be able to express only limited details about that 

time.

Dr. Shlaffer: And of course we know that language skills make a different here in terms of 

what kids can say or share about whether or not they're scared. They may have 

language skills or not to be able to ask questions about what's going on, where 

their parent is going. They may or may not have the language skills to be able to 

express their desire with whom they want to go to when their parent is arrested 

or make plans for younger siblings. And so these cognitive and language skills 

become really important in thinking about what a child's capacity is and how 

they will experience the arrest of their parent.

Dr. Shlaffer: We can think about the same things in terms of social development too with 

regards to thinking about who our children's primary caregivers and their social 

relationship. So for example, for a very young child being separated from their 

primary caregiver or attachment figure has really devastating consequences. 

And so even a short separation for a couple of days from the primary caregiver 

can be very difficult for an infant or young child. Particularly for that child not 

being able to understand what's going on. Of course, that separation is 

challenging and traumatic for older children as well, but the have the language 

and cognitive skills to be able to talk to other adults in their life about what's 

going on, to have some understanding of the circumstances and when their 

parent is coming back. And so those are important considerations to keep in 

mind as well.

Dr. Shlaffer: And then we can think about physical development and how it plays into this 

picture in terms of experiencing a parent's arrest. For example, depending on 

the age of the child, they may be able to physically run away. They may be able 

to physically fight back in terms of if an arresting officer moves into their 

bedroom or an area they may be seen as a threat to the police depending on 

the age of the child for example. In the example that Savanna gave, we heard 

about her ability to physically run and hug her father and what that meant to 

her. So I think all of these sort of domains of development become really 

important in thinking about what a child experiences in the context of their 

parent's incarceration.

Dr. Shlaffer: What's challenging for us as scientists is to really understand how many children 

with incarceration parents have witnessed their parents arrest, in large part 

because our estimates vary widely. And this body of literature in terms of 

parental incarceration has really grown rapidly over the last 10 years, but is still 

quite small in the grand scheme of science and what we need to know. So 

estimates as I said on the number of children who have witnessed parental 

arrest vary greatly. There was a paper in 1995 for example that suggested that 

only 20% of children had experienced their parent's arrest. And another one by 
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Campner and colleagues that suggested of 30 of 36 child participants in their 

study, 83% of them. So 30 of the 36 participants were able to talk about... they 

had indicated that they witnessed their parent's arrest, and they also retained 

very vivid memories of that arrest years later.

Dr. Shlaffer: And so those sort of dated studies at this point suggest anywhere from 20 to 

83% of kids may experience this. But more recent data with a more narrow age 

range of kids in some cases gives us a little more insight into this. We're also 

realizing too that it really matters in some cases who we ask as researchers 

about whether or not the child experienced this arrest. So Dallaire and Wilson in 

2010 for example, in their study with 95 parents, about half fathers and half 

mothers who were incarcerated in a regional jail found that about 38% of 

fathers and 28% of mothers reported that their child had witnessed their arrest. 

And those were children between the ages of seven and seventeen years old.

Dr. Shlaffer: A later study by Dallaire and colleagues looked at a much larger sample, but 

focused exclusively on mothers. So 236 mothers that were incarcerated across 

six different jail settings. And they looked at kids in middle childhood, so six to 

twelve years old. About 33% witnessed their mother's arrest and 8.3% even 

though the focus was on incarcerated mothers, 8.3% of children in that sample 

had also witnessed a father's arrest at some point.

Dr. Shlaffer: And more recent data from my team looking at 315 fathers that were 

incarcerated across four jails in two Midwestern states looked at kids between 

the ages of three and seventeen years old and found that about a quarter of the 

fathers reported that the child witnessed their arrest. This is important to think 

about in the context of where there might be opportunities for intervention. I 

think we're going to have a great conversation as we move forward here about 

these Model Arrest Policies becoming one way that we can intervene and 

intervene early to support families during this traumatic experience. Particularly 

considering that data suggests that at least one in four kids and very likely more 

have experienced this trauma.

Dr. Shlaffer: What we know too is that witnessing the parent's arrest has really important 

implications for child adjustment and well-being. So Dallaire and Wilson wrote 

that exposure to these incarceration related experiences was associated with 

emotional difficulties including anxiety, depression, kids demonstrating less 

emotion regulation skills, as well as problems with vocabulary which may make

it difficult for school. And so again we see that this one experience can have 

ripple effects into kids' adjustment in other settings.

Dr. Shlaffer: We also know that exposure to incarceration specific risks like arrests is strongly 

associated with other internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. By that 

we mean internalizing symptoms like anxiety, depression, withdrawal, and 

externalizing behavior problems like acting out or delinquency or getting into 

trouble. And we that these effects in some of these studies are happening for 

internalizing and externalizing behavior problems over and above the general 
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environmental risks that I mentioned in the beginning, including poverty and 

parent education. So these can have this particular exposure to this really highly 

emotional and traumatic experience can have really important consequences 

for kids' future development.

Dr. Shlaffer: And then of course as we're moving forward here, thinking about this idea that 

Model Arrest Policies that really aim to develop and consider kids' needs and 

where they're at developmentally. Acknowledge that witnessing a parent's 

arrest is often a traumatic experience and that with the right sensitive and 

responsiveness and really getting at a kid's developmental level can really help 

mitigate some of this stress response and the trauma exposure. So with that I 

will turn it over to the next presenter, thank you.

Brendan Cox: Thanks, I appreciate that. So, Brendan Cox. So I am retired from the Albany 

Police Department. I left the police department in 2017. When I retired I was 

the chief. And we were able to ultimately implement a policy around 

safeguarding children and with the policy with the training and we ultimately 

came up with this strategic goal that our safeguarding policy worked into. So it 

was really interesting how our policy and our thinking worked into a strategic 

goal and then ultimately worked into how a number of things changed. And 

how we ultimately utilized what were doing to also change the culture and to 

make sure what we were doing.

Brendan Cox: And I want to kind of start out with just thanking Savanna and highlighting 

hearing from somebody who witnessed a parent's arrest and having Savanna 

tell us about what she was feeling and some of the things she still thinks back to. 

Because one of the things as police and as a law enforcement executive, we 

have to recognize that what might seem routine to us is not routine to other 

people, especially children, especially folks that we're supposed to make sure 

that we protect. And if we're going to make sure that we are in fact protecting 

them that there are ways that we can do that. And there are ways we can make 

sure that we operate in a fashion and our officers operate in a fashion that 

we're not just looking at everything that's routine and we're actually taking 

steps to make sure we do that.

Brendan Cox: So one of those steps can be implementing a policy in training and procedures 

to make sure that our officers don't look at things as routine because many of 

our officers as we talk through this in fact probably don't have children of their 

own when they first come on. And I can use myself as an example. I got hired in 

1994. I was 23 years old. I didn't have any children of my own at that point in 

time. I certainly had nieces and nephews but if you really look at brain 

development and you look at a whole lot of other factors. In many ways I was 

closer of the age to many of the kids that were present that I was responding to 

calls than I was to some of the older officers on the job. So we have to think of 

those things as we're doing things.
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Brendan Cox: So when we talk about safeguarding children and we talk about what the 

International Associations of Chiefs of Police and DJA have been able to do and 

some of the resources that are there, first we have to talk about what is our 

overall purpose when it comes to not only the policy, but when it comes to the 

training and really trying to change that culture. And when we talk about that 

primary policy, it is really about minimizing the trauma that's experienced by the 

child who's going to witness a parent's arrest, and the separation caused by the 

arrest, while maintaining the integrity of that arrest and the safety of officers, 

suspects, and other individuals. So we always talk about when we make an 

arrest as officers, that we want to make sure that the officers are safe, the 

individuals that we're arresting are safe, and that we do it in a way that we can 

cause as little trauma as possible to everybody else.

Brendan Cox: And normally if we are able to implement this policy and do the right kind of 

training we can actually increase safety. And whenever we look at things that 

we can do better in our communities, we can actually increase that safety. And 

when we talk about arrests, certainly we have a country where we utilize arrests 

more than anyone else. And one of the numbers we do know is that is true. As it 

goes, the United States has 5% of the world's population but we have 25% of 

the world's incarcerated population. So we know that openly we utilize arrests a 

lot. So we need to make sure that we're doing our best to make sure that we're 

minimizing that trauma.

Brendan Cox: So, from an executive level, why is it important that we implement this policy? 

Why is it important that we minimize that trauma? Well first of all, because it 

does minimize trauma. Because we know that if we can respond to calls and 

arrests and we can do it in the least traumatizing way that we can reduce that 

trauma. We also know that it reduces liability. That if we put ourselves in 

position that we're not doing something in a fashion where others might get 

harmed we're going to reduce that liability. It increases our legitimacy. We know 

through studies that if we do things that people understand and people can at 

least recognize that they are more likely to comply with what we do and they 

are more likely to understand what we do. So we know that legitimacy is a true 

thing. We know that when folks are treated with dignity and respect and 

certainly when we implement safeguarding policies and practices, we are in fact 

making sure we're treating people with dignity and respect by making sure that 

if children are there that we try to figure out a way to do it to where the child's 

not present. We ultimately increase our legitimacy.

Brendan Cox: It creates better relationships when we talk about policing. We don't want to be 

policing people. We want to work together to create a safer public. So we want 

to do that in partnership. So we build relationships both with outside agencies 

that can help us, and Katie's going to talk a little bit about some of the things we 

are able to do in Albany. But we create better relationships with other agencies, 

but we also create better relationships with the community. And that's on of the 

things we want to do. We're doing this because it's the right thing to do. At the 

end of the day, our job is to protect folks and to protect folks that are 
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vulnerable. And sometimes we just need to say that is the bottom line. If it's the 

right thing to do then we're going to ultimately do it.

Brendan Cox: Before I go a little further, I just want to touch base on... I think I went too far, 

go back a second. All right, so this is what happens, I'm clicking through my 

thing and this is what happens when you give me the control over... all right. So 

what else it does is it provides that guidelines for our officers. Forgive me for the 

tech issues, that's completely on me. I have control over the slides. It provides 

the guidelines for officers when they're answering calls for service where 

children are present. Because, ultimately we're not just talking about when 

we're arresting people. Remember, our officers are going on calls all the time 

where children are present. It's also about when we're going to make that 

arrest.

Brendan Cox: But I just want to bring something else up. It's about the fact that we may have 

somebody in custody where we arrested them at a spot where children weren't 

at that location and a child might be home alone. Or a child might be in route to 

being home alone. So we might have arrested somebody at two o'clock in the 

afternoon and a child is at school, and that child is going to get brought home by 

the bus at three o'clock. So safeguarding policies also talk about our officers 

proactively saying to somebody, "Do you have a child at home? Is the child in 

route from school? What can we do to make sure that an adult, somebody 

responsible is going to be there to make sure your child's taken care of while we 

finish this up?" So it's about that as well.

Brendan Cox: It's also about planning and executing search warrants in a way that we 

recognize when children are present. And that's something that really helps out 

when we talk about tactics. Because when we execute a search warrant, 

especially when we do it in a circumstance where there may be weapons in the 

house, if we can make sure of that we plan that and know who's supposed to be 

in that house. And if there's children that are going to be present, we can 

actually plan around when those children aren't going to be there. So, that way 

we don't put them in harm's way. Also, that temporary placing children with 

caregivers due to separation. So recognizing that we can help really process to 

get the child to a safe place while we ultimately have the parent while we 

process the child and take care of that.

Brendan Cox: So some of the resources that are available that really help you out to recognize 

that you do not need to start from scratch. A few years ago you did, you no 

longer have to do that. But there are all kinds of resources from DJA and IACP 

that include implementation guidelines, a model policy, there's a separate 

guideline for police executives that reads through not only what is available but 

it also talks through what our responsibilities are from a legal standpoint when 

it comes to safeguarding individuals and when people are in our custody. 

There's a whole webinar series, I believe there's six webinar in and of 

themselves that are available that go from what it takes to implement to some 

of the barriers to creating partnerships. So there's all kinds of resources there. 
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There is a one and a half hour online officer training that make it very easy for 

you to take an officer off the street for an hour and a half, have them do that 

online training, and really be able to do something that's very difficult to do. 

Scheduling training is not always the easiest thing to do.

Brendan Cox: There's a fifteen minute executive briefing for executives that folks can come in 

and go over very quickly what that means. And then there's that pre-arrest 

checklist that I know was spoken about before. So there are resources that are 

available. They can be adapted for what an agency needs. But they are out there 

and they're available.

Brendan Cox: So one of the key components for a successful program is really strong 

partnerships with community partners. And that really helps to enhance the 

training. Better communication along inter-agency lines. Better results for 

children who need to be placed in temporary custody. So if we know that the 

child needs to be placed for two hours while you do processing, that way we 

don't have to necessarily remove the child from child protective services. If we 

have somewhere else where there is an appropriate guardian in line.

Brendan Cox: Also, appropriate follow up with the children and parent. We ask law 

enforcement to do a lot. And one of the things law enforcement certainly 

cannot do is step into a role where we're trying to raise children or give parental 

advice. That's probably not appropriate for us. But there are agencies in the 

community that can do that. So when we partner with those agencies and we 

now have a situation where we've arrested a parent and a child was present and 

we know that. If we have the right partners in the community, we can filter that 

information to them and say, "Can you follow up with this family just to make 

sure they have the services, they have what they need?" And that's something 

that can also then take some weight off of the shoulders of the parents. And 

we're doing that... that's not a punitive piece, that's very much facilitating 

services for families that might need some help. And I think as somebody who 

has two children, there's times that you do need that help. That definitely 

works.

Brendan Cox: And then, the partnerships also help establish those written guidelines between 

agencies that outline those rules or responsibilities. And I can say that the 

Osborne Association was a huge partner for us that helped us establish those 

guidelines. That also helped us not have what I'll kind of term as mission free, to 

recognize that, "Okay, what should law enforcement do? What should social 

services do? What should not-for-profits do?" To make sure that we are 

ultimately each staying in our lane but having that communication back and 

forth so that way each of the different folks in the room we're doing the right 

thing and making sure that things were taken care of. So partnerships are a 

really important part of a good safeguarding policy and a good safeguarding 

practice. Because, it's really going beyond just a policy. We can have all the 

policies in the world, but we ultimately have to bring it into a practice. And 
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that's one of the things that we really tried to do in having a strategic planning 

session.

Brendan Cox: So one of the questions I get a lot is I get, "How do you get officer buy in? And I 

think in today's world when we talk about officer buy in. When I came on it was, 

not that this was right, but we were basically told, "Hey this is how we do things. 

Don't ask questions, just do it." And I think that's a very inappropriate way to 

get not only buy ins but to get compliance and to get people to do their job. I 

think the appropriate way to get people to do their job is for folks to have a 

chance to talk things out. To understand what they're doing, to understand why 

they're doing it.

Brendan Cox: In 1994 no one was talking about it first childhood experiences. No one was 

talking about the brain science behind development of the adolescent. No one 

was talking about mass incarceration and why it's not a good thing that we have 

2.1 million people in jails and prisons. No one was talking about a lot of mental 

health issues. Yet we were dealing with those and we didn't have the tools 

necessary. We now have a lot of those tools. And if as law enforcement 

executives we're knot bringing those to our officers and we're not doing it in a 

way that we're including the officers in that discussion in that training, then 

we're actually going to be failing them.

Brendan Cox: So establishing a safeguarding policy and implementing it in a way that we're 

training people and bringing them into the conversation and giving them the 

tools they need and the education, we're actually going to make things better. 

Because we are then going to be reducing that liability, providing an 

understanding of how an arrest or negative police interaction be traumatic to a 

child. So when we step into the role of being a police officer and we put a 

uniform on and a badge and we go out on patrol, as a police officer you look at 

yourself as, "I'm the good guy. I'm here to help." But what you don't always do 

is to see it from the angle of other people, the how they might see us. And as 

when we come into a community or answer a call for service of the point of 

view of the individual that we're answering the call for. And certainly we don't 

think about how is everybody looking at it when we put a pair of handcuffs on 

somebody. Especially if we're doing it in front of a child.

Brendan Cox: So that training and strategic planning, and making sure we're doing it in a way 

where we're actually changing the culture can help an officer see, "Okay, that's 

how someone else is seeing this and I can now see it through their eyes. And I 

can now change the way I do this." You can also provide that guidance on 

planning and responding to those calls for service. As I said, I was 23 years old 

when I became an officer. To me interacting with an 11 year old? I might not 

have even known quite how to interact with an 11 year old. And at the time in 

1994 certainly police academies weren't providing that. We can now provide 

that. We know that we partner with the right agencies where we can provide 

opportunities for our officers to engage in proactive, positive activities with the 
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youth of our cities. So, that way it's not the first time that they're dealing with 

the child when it's a negative interaction.

Brendan Cox: Then again, we know we can increase officer safety and I can't say enough 

about empathy. Empathy is something that in this line of work, you absolutely 

need. But it's also something that you can lose very easy. You can also get it 

back and I certainly will admit that I lost empathy. There's not too many police 

officers or too many nurses and doctors and teachers that I speak to that also 

have not said that they have lost empathy at some point. That is a natural thing 

to happen. But we need to build that empathy back up. And a safeguarding 

strategy can help do that, because it gives the officers a point of view to let 

them recognize, to understand why we're doing this.

Brendan Cox: So I'm going to kind of end just by telling you the Albany story. So I guess I'm 

doing it a little backwards. I'm telling you what the policies and resources are, 

and then I'm going to tell you the Albany story. So, I get a call one day from two 

people Tonya Krupat at Osborne and Jackie Green who at the time was with 

New York State. She was the deputy secretary for public safety. And I was 

running our detective office and I had just come out of [inaudible 00:44:02]. And 

they said, "Hey, we want to talk to you about this safeguarding policy we're 

working on. The state's working on some stuff along with IACP." They explained 

a few things to me and they asked me what we did. And I went through a 10 

minute talk on everything we did to safeguard children during an arrest. And at 

the end of what I said they were like, "Wow, that's really great. That sounds 

awesome. Can you help us? Can you give us your policy and training?"

Brendan Cox: And my end of the phone went dead because I realized that we had no training 

and we had no policy. So in my head we might have been doing that stuff, but 

we did not have a culture where we were doing that. That certainly from my 

stance in the juvenile unit we were doing that, but I had 15 of 342 officers under 

me. So to say that we were doing that was probably not what we were doing. So 

when I told them that, I confessed that we were not doing that. They said, 

"You're not alone. Let's work on this together." So we decided that, that's what 

we would do. So as we did that, we built out our policy, our training, our 

procedure, and started to change our culture. And one of the things we did is 

about a year into that we had started our strategic planning. And we ultimately 

identified a goal called Winning Over Generations.

Brendan Cox: Winning Over Generations was twofold. One fold was the fact that we wanted 

to break down some of those barriers that we had between police officers and 

the youth in our city. And the other piece was that we wanted to... if we were 

ever going to make sure that... the city lobby's about 34% African-American and 

I think our police department at the time was about 14 or 15% AfricanAmerican. If we were ever to be a police department that was going to be 

reflective of our community, then we actually had to have people from our 

community want to be a police officer. So if we were ever going to meet that, 
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then first of all we had to meet our first goal. And that was what was going to 

get people in our community to want to be police officers.

Brendan Cox: So we recognized very quickly that this was a big piece of winning over a 

generation. Because if we started from the very beginning with our officers 

when they answered a call, when they had to make an arrest, if they did it in a 

way where they made sure that they were safeguarding children and those 

types of situations that they were taking the extra step that they needed to 

take. So they didn't arrest somebody in front of the child. Or if they took the 

extra step to talk to a child and make sure that that kid knew that this is not 

your fault, you did nothing wrong. We're going to let you talk to Mom, we're 

going to let you talk to Dad. We're going to help work this out. That ultimately 

we could help meet that goal. And that goal was ultimately not only good for 

the department, that goal was good for the city. That goal was good for the 

community. And that goal is good for that child.

Brendan Cox: So, that's how we helped to bring that along. And I am now going to turn things 

over to Katie Clark. And Katie, I had the pleasure of having Katie work with me in 

Albany for a long time. And Katie was able to help bring this policy and practice 

and take it to a whole new level with Albany. I'll let her explain some of those 

things.

Katie Clark: Thanks Brendan. My name is Katie Clark. I am the anti-violence coordinator for 

Albany Police Department. I have been with the department for just over 10 

years. I am a licensed master's social worker, so I am not a police officer and my 

role with the department started as being a youth aid and carrying a caseload of 

chronic truants and other kids that were having interactions with law 

enforcement for a variety of reasons. It kind of has morphed into helping to 

develop some purposes and policies to support the youth that we interact with 

and also a whole bunch of other things. They're just not related to that.

Katie Clark: So really to make this issue clear for everybody, I think it's really important for 

me to explain kind of how our department is a little unique from other 

departments. We have a couple of civilian roles, mine and then the youth aid 

who are both designed to work as outreach and work in that area of program 

policy development, youth interaction, and making sure that the department is 

staying connected to the youth. We're also here to make sure that we're staying 

aware of some of the kind of up and coming issues as they relate to law 

enforcement, and trauma has been one of them. So we started learning about 

EFAs probably about five or six years ago now, and have been trying to figure 

out the best way for law enforcement to also learn about that issue and how we 

can tailor that to how we work in the community both as routine patrol officers 

and then dealing with victims and then dealing with our officers and civilians as 

well.

Katie Clark: The other benefit of Albany is that we have two kind of nontraditional units of 

our police department. We had a prevention services unit that has five officers 
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that are assigned to do outreach with kids and with adults. So they're our 

highest risk individuals and really they're approaching those individuals with 

compassion and to give those individuals voice under the offices of respect so 

that they can really try and understand what's at the root of their issues and get 

them to make some better choices, access services that are available to them 

and kind of get them out of the trajectory that they're on with those contacts of 

law enforcement.

Katie Clark: I'm saying all this to kind of show that the police department's been looking at 

this idea of how we interact with our youth and that it's not just kind of on the 

fun play front of recreation games and bike rodeos, but that we're... we've been 

trying to get to the root of the issue of supporting our youth and helping them 

through some of those kind of more socially based programs. And that's one of 

the reasons why we're recognized as 21st century policing site. Because we 

pushed some of that into our training. And really that's kind of where our 

Safeguarding of Children of Arrested Parents policy has gone. While we were 

part of the Bureau for Justice Assistants development of that policy, we also 

helped with their training and aided our officers that are featured in that. And 

we still train that to our officers to this day.

Katie Clark: On top of that we started bringing a training into the police department. We've 

now trained all of our officers on child development, brain science, the 

development of the brain, and how long it takes for the brain to develop and 

how people react during those different times. As well as the effect of trauma 

on brain development and on child development. And how that can affect 

people's interactions with each other, with law enforcement, with their peers, 

with family, so that there's some context for some of the calls our officers are 

going on.

Katie Clark: Particularly because we have a very large school district, and a number of 

residential treatment centers that we get called to often. So we want to make 

sure that our officers are understanding the impacts that that is having and that 

ACEs are having on our kids. Because we're being called to assist in those in a 

number of different ways. And sometimes it's frustrating to get those calls 

repeatedly, but when we can kind of frame it around what that kid's going 

through it brings some light to it. And it allows the officer to understand that the 

kid may not be in control of what's going on with them and their behaviors. And 

then they can kind of take that a little differently.

Katie Clark: So we do that training in conjunction with the LaSalle school, which is one of our 

residential training centers here. And they're really on the forefront of ACE 

training and development. They're one of our ACE sites. And we do that so that 

there are both experts in the brain science, but we do that with patrol officers. 

So there's a credible messenger from law enforcement for how to transmit what 

they're learning into what they're doing on the street each and every day. And 

our school resource officers have gone through that, our patrol officers, our 

community engagement officers, our beat officers, supervisors. So it's really a 
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top down approach. And it is a day long class that we spend time with during 

our academy now. So that our brand new officers are learning that from the 

very beginning as part of how they interact with people.

Katie Clark: And that really brings me into one of the things that happened as we were 

developing and implementing our Safeguarding for Children of Arrested Parents 

policy. The youth aid at the time and I wanted to create a way to understand 

what kids were witnessing the arrest of their parents. And beyond that, because 

we knew that kind of law enforcement interaction with kids can take on a 

number of different forms. The kids are witnessing crimes. The kids are the 

victims of crimes. We also wanted to get a better understanding of what kind of 

interactions our kids were having with law enforcement. And so we started 

reading through all of the reports that our officers write every day and 

cataloging all of the different interactions that our youth ages zero to eighteen 

have with law enforcement.

Katie Clark: And one of the things that happened was after a couple of months, we had a 

couple hundred entries. And we kind of were extremely overwhelmed, realized 

that we had this dataset and that we were doing nothing about it. And some of 

this were week old babies who were in the middle of parental domestics 

multiple times with police responding. To kids that were the victims of assault, 

to kids that were running away. To kids that were being arrested by police for 

other crimes that they were committing. And I just really ran the gamut. And so 

we kind of recognized that we had to do something about it. So we started 

looking around to see if there was a model that we could find at the Bureau for 

Justice Assistants, or the International Association of Police, could show us for 

what law enforcement agencies do with this information.

Katie Clark: And we came across West Virginia's Handle With Care program and started 

looking at that program, reaching out to West Virginia, understanding how they 

developed it and kind of what all of the nuances are. What we've learned now is 

that West Virginia started this back in 2015. It is a statewide policy that they 

have in place for notifications, for kids who have had interactions with law 

enforcement and witnessed traumatic events. So in working with them we 

stared understanding what the program looked like. We reached out to our 

school district, one of our school psychologists and said, "Here's what we have 

going on. We know when kids are having interactions with law enforcement, we 

know that that's something that would probably be important for you to know. 

Because you are having contact with these kids. They're probably having 

reactions to these interactions that are brought into the school day and that are 

causing them to act, just not like themselves. Whether that means they miss a 

day, whether that means they're acting out, whether that means they're 

sleeping, they've missed a homework assignment, they're crying. It can look like 

a thousand different things."

Katie Clark: But one of the things that we knew the school district was going through at the 

time was a disproportionate minority contact with their suspensions and their 
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interventions. And so we thought that maybe this would be a way for them to 

have some context for how their kids were acting, and that if they feel that 

something had happened the day before, that would at least reduce the 

possibility that that child would be suspended, given detention, put in in-school 

suspension or have any other disciplinary action taken against them. The minute 

we said that to the school psychologist she came up with seven different 

examples of kids that she had had interactions with recently who were 

struggling at school, who had behavioral incidents because something had 

happened the day before and nobody knew. And they found out from that child 

before it was too late.

Katie Clark: So we started working through the school district to figure out what the best 

way to get this information to them is. And really the idea that West Virginia has 

is law enforcement provides a name and a date of birth and that is it. There is 

no additional identifying information. There's no context to what that child went 

through in order to protect the child's privacy. Because there is a wide range of 

things that we know that our kids see from being displaced from a home that's 

caught on fire, being a victim of sexual abuse, to having something stolen, to 

being a victim of a robbery, to a number of different things. Witnessing parental 

domestic violence, being part of parental domestic violence. We've had kids find 

their parents dead from an overdose. We've had kids who have been present 

for their parent's arrest, and the whole gamut.

Katie Clark: So it's just the kid's name and date of birth that is sent to the school district. And 

the school district has teams of people in each of their school buildings who 

receive that notification. And essentially have that if the child's acting like 

something other than themselves. It's not a time for that personnel to reach out

to the kid and start questioning him about what happened the day before. It's 

just kind of that reminder to have in the back of their head if the kid's acting not 

like themself and may be in need of some additional intervention.

Katie Clark: There is an understanding that if the child hits a point where it seems like they 

need intervention, that trauma informed services will be used. That community 

organization that practices trauma informed care will be referral agencies it 

seems that the child or the family need additional psychological or mental 

health interventions. And really it goes from there. At this point we know that 

last year, we started this in December of the 2017-2018 school year. And during 

that year we had 233 kids that were identified. This year to date we've had 475 

kids that have been identified. There are some duplicates in there. We've had 

25 kids this school year who have had multiple handle with care notifications 

provided to the school district. So we know that those kids are of greater 

concern.

Katie Clark: One of the biggest obstacles that we have is that while our city school district is 

large and covers most of the kids that attend public schools, we also have a 

number of charter schools, parochial schools and private schools that our kids 

attend. And so at this point we're trying to figure out, as those schools are set 
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up whether or not they have the resources to be able to provide the trauma 

informed care that the kids may need if and when it rises to that level. If they 

have the infrastructure to be able to receive those notifications. And we also 

have a concern from a level of privacy of the number of different places that we 

start sending notifications to, the more kind of this child's privacy does not get 

to be protected in the same way. So in terms of beyond our regular school 

district, we have eight charter schools, and I believe there's 12 or 13 private and 

parochial.

Katie Clark: we do know that we're at about a 60-40 split of 60% of the notifications being 

made, and 40% of notifications not being made. And we're trying to determine 

who those students are. What age they are, what school they may go to so that 

we're targeting the right schools for the right reasons. We did have one of the 

charter schools reach out to us, and so we started making those notifications in 

the winter of this school year. But at this point some of the others have been a 

little hesitant to join, because they just don't know if they can provide the 

additional services.

Katie Clark: The other thing that we know is that for non school age children there in an 

incredible gap and there are resources that are needed for those kids. And for 

us, it's overwhelming that those kids outnumber our school age kids for their 

interactions with law enforcement. Those kids predominately are witnessing 

parental domestic violence, are in homes that there may be fires that are 

happening and they're displaced. That there's other issues that are happening 

within the family, where the family is becoming homeless where they're at, 

mental health issues. But we know that those kids are in need of services and 

support. And so we're trying to work with our local community nonprofit 

agencies to determine a way for those kids to get some of the same attention 

that our school age kids get. Because we know if we can provide some better 

early intervention we can get those kids on track developmentally, make sure 

that any of their needs are being addressed.

Katie Clark: And also, help to train the community in what's going on with ACEs and how 

that affects child development. At this time, that's probably the end of what I 

have to say. I noticed there was a question about other states that are 

implementing Handle With Care. I know that West Virginia is implementing it, 

Michigan, parts of New York, Maryland, Texas, Florida. And I believe there's 

about 15 other states that have some form of Handle With Care happening, 

whether it's in one school district, a county, or a number of different counties 

within the state. They all are a little bit different. I know that even within New 

York they're all a little bit different depending on what the law enforcement 

agency is and the set up of the school system.

Katie Clark: But for more information you can go to handlewithcarewv.org. That's West 

Virginia's site. They hold a conference every year that's fantastic. And there's an 

incredible mess of information on their site for how this program was 

developed, some of their success stories. It really is incredible. So I believe with 
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that, I'm going to turn it back over to our host for some of the questions and 

answers.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Great. Thank you so much Katie and Brendan and Rebecca. That was such 

helpful information from all of you. And I want to encourage everybody on the 

phone to, if you have questions to continue adding them to the chat box on 

your screen and we will address them. Our first question is for Brendan. "If 

you're an average person in the community who wants to see their police 

department institute something like this policy, where would you recommend 

they start? Who should they talk to, to build support?"

Brendan Cox: So thank you for that question. So I'll answer that in two different ways. So the 

first way is that if you already know your beat officer, you have an officer that 

you're already familiar with, talk to them. Because a lot of times there's 

champions within the department and especially if there's a community officer 

that you already have a good rapport with, that's a good person to go to. We 

tried to build a true community policing model where the officers in the 

neighborhood can answer all those questions and also can help get those 

resources. So if folks had those questions they could get those.

Brendan Cox: But if you don't have that, call the main number. Listen, there's plenty of people 

would call my number and they would either talk to my assistant or they would 

talk to me and we would try to get that information and certainly get them to 

the right person. But, there's nothing wrong with advocating all the way to the 

top. So if this is something you feel strongly about in your community, there's 

really nothing wrong with calling the main number of the chief's office and 

saying, "Hey, we're aware of this program and we want to see if our police 

department's doing it, and if not who could we talk to within the department to 

see if this is something we could get adopted."

Brendan Cox: Because a lot of the work is already done. So, I say go one of those two paths. If 

there's somebody you already have a relationship with, talk to them. If not, call 

the main number and ask, "Who's the person I can speak to here?" And if there 

isn't somebody already that they can connect you with, just ask, "Hey, can I 

speak to the chief? I'd like to talk to him about this initiative I'm aware of."

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Thanks Brendan, that's really helpful. So when you were chief, what was your 

elevator speech to get... you know, quote unquote elevator speech or quick 

three minute synopsis to gain buy in for these policy and procedure changes 

that you are advocating for?

Brendan Cox: It wasn't much different than today. To me when I was talking to police officers 

it was like, "Hey listen. You're young when you come on. You don't have 

children. You don't necessarily know how to address those situations. And we're 

trying to give you the right tools to do that." And then at the end of the day our 

job is to protect vulnerable people. And try to tell me who's more vulnerable 

than a child. Not too many more people that are. So if that's our job, if our job is 
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to help people and to protect the vulnerable then guess what? That's your job. 

And you need to do that, and I'm giving you the tools to do it. Not much 

different than today. These are the tools that we're providing so that you can do 

a better job.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Great. And we have a question that I think would be for Katie, but Dr. Shlaffer, 

Rebecca you could probably answer as well. The question is, "Can you give an 

example of notifications to school, and how or who decides if the school should 

take action, make referrals et cetera to address the possible needs? Do students 

have the option to say, 'No thank you' or 'How do you know about my family?' 

What are the privacy issues that come up?" That's a question that came in from 

an audience member.

Katie Clark: I can take that one. So really, the crux of this is in the training. So the school 

district identifies a number of key individuals within each building. It's usually a 

principal, social worker, sometimes a nurse. And for elementary school aged 

kids it may be the classroom teacher, because the classroom teacher is spending 

the majority of the day with that child. But again, it's about training. This is not a 

time when it's time for that person to go up to that child and let them know that 

a notification was made. That is not what is supposed to happen. It's an 

awareness, so that if the child acts unlike themself then an intervention can be 

put in place. And that intervention depends on what is happening with that 

child. If it's a day where the kid is exhausted and falling asleep in class, the 

ability for that kid to go to the nurse's office and take an hour long nap, maybe 

that's all that needs to happen. If it's something where the kid is acting out 

continuously or there's a behavior pattern that lasts for a number of days and 

the social worker doesn't feel like it's something that can be addressed within 

the school building, that's when they talk about other interventions, potential 

community interventions, communication with a parent.

Katie Clark: And it's really child focused. We know that your child... we see that your child is 

not acting like themself. They're struggling with whatever the actual behavior is. 

And we think that they may benefit from talking to somebody. From tutoring,

from whatever it may be that can help that child that day. And in terms of 

privacy issues, we had a long discussion when we went to put Handle With Care 

in place about even sharing the child's name and date of birth. One of our 

biggest concern is law enforcement is the only one that's making this 

notification. So it's clear that there is some law enforcement contact. Our dream 

is that at some point it becomes law enforcement, probation, child protective, 

and parents themself. Because we know that there are kids that are going to be 

affected because they just found out that their parents are getting divorced, 

that grandma just died, that somebody just got diagnosed with cancer. And 

they're going to have some of the same behavioral reactions to that, some of 

the same emotional reactions to that, that it's going to interrupt their school 

day and bring the attention of school personnel.
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May 2019

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Katie Clark: So that's our concern around privacy issues, and particularly for some of those 

kids where there are multiple Handle With Care notifications over a school year. 

We know that there is a tendency for people to then kind of look at that kid and 

go, "What is going on with your life?" And so that's something that's always in 

the back of our minds. And it's been a work in progress with the school district 

to have them on board. Our school district was in the process of becoming 

trauma informed as we were. And so this really just kind of fell into place at the 

right time. But I can't stress how important it is for the school district to 

understand what ACEs are, the effects of ACEs on kids, and what being trauma 

informed really means.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Thanks Katie, that's very helpful too. And I know that at the beginning of the 

webinar, Cheri Hoffman from ASPE mentioned the youth.gov website and the 

information that we have on that website. And some of what you mentioned, 

we have in some tip sheets on that website. So we hope people will go there 

too, to look for information. Where we feel encourage educators and teachers, 

other people that work with youth to understand more about what's behind 

some of the behaviors that we may see in kids in school. And so before a 

punishment let's say is given, maybe understanding what's behind that. So 

thanks Katie for reinforcing that.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: We have a question for Savanna. How did you get connected to your mentor?

Savanna: So there's a program in Hour Children called The Mentoring Program. And it's 

for all kids who pretty much had any type of troubles with having a long 

distance from their mom because their moms are in prison, or dads. So my 

mom, Kelly has a program called Teen Program where they pretty much give a 

mentor to either talk to or go out. Just to have a little fun in their life and know 

that they have somebody to talk to. And somebody that actually cares about 

them.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: So you got your mentor through the Hour Children, hour like H-O-U-R Children's 

Program. And how did you get connected with the Hour Children Program?

Savanna: When my mother was in jail, there was a person named Sister [inaudible 

01:12:34] and she comes up to the jails and really just talks to the women and 

sees how they're going to change. And my mom did not really think that they 

were actually going to come back to visit her and actually give her a new life. 

But I guess they did. And now my mom's here.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: That's great. Thank you. Can you tell us more about how being involved with 

that organization has helped you both during the incarceration of your parents 

and after?

Savanna: Well, some of the things that I participate in is, I am in the Teen Program which 

is for almost all teens. Just for some arts and crafts. It's pretty cool. The Mentor 

Program which is pretty much so you know that you have somebody to care for 
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you, somebody to take you out, and somebody to do fun things with. I do 

therapy with people in Hour Children who will hold all your secrets. They are a 

great person to talk to. I also had these things called Grow Up Group. And all of

my friends who I have known for the longest, most of their mothers went to 

prison and came to Hour Children. And someone has the same backstory as me. 

We do a girl's group and we pretty much talk about anything, like anything. Any 

troubles or even if you want to pull them aside and just have your one-on-one 

talks, they're always great. And yeah...

Juliette-Marie deSousa: That sounds great, Savanna. Thank you for sharing that. We have a question for 

Dr. Shlaffer. In commonly reported statistics, one may see the number 2.7 

million as the number of youths with incarcerated parents. Can you please 

explain the difference between that estimate and the 1.75 million youths that 

you mentioned?

Dr. Shlaffer: Yeah, that's a great question. So we've seen a number of different estimates 

pop up in different places depending on the methods that were used to collect 

those estimates. So the 1.75 million statistic that I gave was from a report from 

the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And that is federal government reporting on 

interviews with a selected and representative group of people in state and 

federal prisons. So adults in federal prisons at that point in time and I think 

those data were collected in maybe 2007? I know the report came out in 2008, 

so maybe a little bit even older than that.

Dr. Shlaffer: So those data are quite dated at this point in terms of they're more than 10 

years old. And again, those represent people who are in prison at the time of 

that data collection. And I think Juliette, you had shared a different statistic 

from another source of data. And so sometimes we see variation both in terms 

of whether kids are asked, retrospectively have you ever had a parent go to jail 

or prison? And other times we see data are collected as a point in time 

estimate, meaning parents are asked as their currently incarcerated, do you 

have children? And so we see depending on who is asked and when they're 

asked variation in these data. But I think it's fair to say that the majority of 

people who are in jails and prisons in this country are parents with minor 

children, and that millions of children are experiencing the incarceration of their 

parent on any given day.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Thanks for clarifying that Dr. Shlaffer. And one more question for you. "What 

developmental signs should caregivers look for that may flag some area of 

concern?"

Dr. Shlaffer: Yeah, and I think Katie did such a nice job talking about this in terms of how this 

would look in classrooms too. Really we would be looking out for things that are 

really out of the ordinary. This doesn't look like your child's typical behavior. So 

we know there's huge variation in kids, right? Any parent who's listening today 

knows that their two children or if they have multiple children that their kids are 

quite different, even in the same household. I can think about my own son who 
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turned 10 yesterday and just how different he is at 10 years old than he was at 

eight years old for example. And part of our job as parents and caregivers is to 

just pay attention to our kids behaviors, right? Know that a reaction may not be 

typical and being thoughtful about how we respond to that. And so, that could 

look like major changes that you may see in developmental milestones that we 

have already seen our children achieve.

Dr. Shlaffer: For example, if you saw a child who already had done toilet training for 

example, and was using the bathroom regularly and not having an issue, right? 

Let's think about a third grader for example. And always goes to the bathroom 

when they need to. And then all of the sudden they are constantly wetting 

themselves, or wetting themselves on a regular basis. That would be something 

that is so atypical and really would give us a red flag for saying, "What's going on 

with this kiddo?" But also, Katie had some great examples about sleeping in 

class. If that's not typical for a kid, if a kid is more reactive than normal. And so 

we can think about sort of differences across development domains that look 

atypical for that child. Again knowing that there's huge variation of kids at the 

same age, even in kids in the same families. So really being a two and two, 

what's typical for your child or for that particular child?

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Right, thank you. Let's see. I'm checking to see if more questions have come in. 

For Brendan Cox, "Were officers involved in the development of the training in 

Albany?"

Brendan Cox: So, yes. So we were lucky. The DJA and IACP came in and they asked if we would 

take part in creating the training video. So there was a group of officers that 

took part in it and are in that video that goes out across the country. And then 

our training unit, which has officers in it were involved in developing the policy 

which was certainly based on the ISP policy but it was also based on our own 

policies and our internal training. So yes there were officers involved. And that's 

a huge help. That's something we really tried to do with a lot of different 

policies, that whenever you're trying to just shift the culture when you can do 

peer-to-peer training and peer-to-peer involvement in a policy that really helps. 

That's a huge piece to be able to get that change.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Right, that sounds important for getting buy in. We have another question for 

Katie about privacy and any resistance to identifying student in that way that 

both you and Dr. Shlaffer mentioned. "And how did you overcome that 

resistance? And what other sort of privacy concerns maybe came up or come up 

for you while you're implementing the Handle With Care program?"

Katie Clark: So the resistance that really came up between us and the school district was 

around who should have that information. Clearly this in not a everybody in the 

school district should be given the name of students and their dates of birth. 

Was really around creating a prospective way for that information to be 

delivered. So for us we send it to essentially our central registration and pupil 

personnel department. They provide not only kind of the student data, but they 
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also do all the student social and emotional parts and some of the programming 

for the district. And so they determine what building that child goes to school 

at, and what the team at that building is that receives that child's information. 

And again, it's just the name and the date of birth. So there really was no 

resistance whatsoever.

Katie Clark: We did do a press conference before we started the program. We had 

conversations with our legal teams about whether or not we could even share 

this information, and there was not doubt that we could. The same thing 

happened in our conversations with West Virginia. They had the same concerns 

and really because of the police interaction it's just our information to be able to 

provide. And because there's no identifying information about the incident 

itself, it's information that we can give. The resistance that we had was how that 

student's name and date of birth would be used. And really I can't [inaudible 

01:22:21] that they chose the people in each building because of their 

knowledge around trauma and that they would be able to use this information 

appropriately and not, you know, possibly good intentions, go up to that kid and 

try to find out more details. Because that child may not be ready to share. It 

may be a secret that they're trying to hide. And that this is something to kind of 

have in your tool belt if and only if that child is acting unlike themself.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: Okay. I guess the thought is that the first question people might ask is, "Who 

gave permission for the police to tell the school this information?"

Katie Clark: So again, we're not sharing information about the incident. They're not knowing 

why that child is getting a Handle With Care notification. And nothing happens 

unless the child is acting unlike themself. The context to be able to provide the 

appropriate intervention for that child. So we know that there are kids who 

have seen horrific things where the kid kind of is acting exactly like themself for 

a really long time, and nothing ever happens. But there are also times when a 

kid may come to school the next day and be having a horrendous day and a 

horrendous day the day after that, and a horrendous day the day after that.

Katie Clark: And at this point it's not just about having a discussion around, "Johnny's having 

a really bad day. We know that something happened and they shouldn't be 

suspended." But that the conversation with the parent is around, "Johnny's 

been having a really rough week. We've seen these behaviors, we've seen these 

behaviors. We think we need to do something because it's affecting his learning. 

And we really don't want to suspend, we don't want to have any disciplinary 

action happen. Is there something going on that we can help with? Or is there 

something that we can provide to you so that the family is getting the support 

that it needs?"

Brendan Cox: So this is Brendan. So if I could just add on for one second. So, like one of the 

strategies that somebody that would be implementing this would want to do, 

and this came in after I left but it's a strategy that we tried to always go with. 

And I know that Katie was part of making sure this strategy happened as was 
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the school district is that there would be some community engagement and 

notification when something like this happens. So there was a lot of education 

that went around this that folks knew that this was happening. And that the 

community was not only made aware at different meetings, this was openly 

spoken about.

Brendan Cox: And the community... I guess I don't want to oversell the input, but the 

community was made aware of it, there were discussions around it, so folks got 

some education around it so that way people were more familiar with what was 

happening. So they didn't think like, "The police were bringing some kind of 

information to the school district so kids were going to be... something punitive 

was happening." So people really understood why this was occurring, what the 

scope of it was and that it was simply for to make sure that if something was 

going on in the classroom like Katie explained that was different, the teacher 

knew that they could be more supportive and not do something that would just 

add on to some trauma that had already happened.

Katie Clark: Great, yeah. Thank you for building off of Katie's response. And Katie, thank you 

for explaining that so carefully and going into that detail. So I think our last 

question is for Brendan too. And then after Brendan you answer this I think I'll 

pass it back to Cheri to close us out and finish up this webinar. But our final 

question for Brendan is, "How was the initial reception you received from your 

police department when you first tried to get others on board with this policy?"

Brendan Cox: I think we had a really good reception. I think getting the policy itself together 

was not always the easiest thing, especially when we started talking about 

asking people when they were being processed in an arrest whether or not they 

had a child at home, what steps you were going to take if they said they did. 

There was a little bit at times of frustration at that point. But once we put the 

policy together and really started getting the training out and getting people to 

understand why we're doing it, I think there was really good reception. I think 

most of the officers appreciated that. Just like I think that now that the 

department's doing the training around ACEs and trauma informed policing that 

it's very appreciated. I think the officers are happy that they're finally getting an 

understanding of how to deal with these situations that quite frankly that's not 

what they thought of when they signed their name on the dotted line. That all 

of the sudden they didn't know all of the things they needed to know to actually 

effectively do their job. So I think overall it's been very positive.

Juliette-Marie deSousa: That's great to hear, and I think helpful for those on the webinar hearing who 

might want to do this in their communities to hear that you had positive 

reception. So with that, I want to thank everybody for participating today and 

thank you to our panelists. You guys have provided us with a wealth of 

information on a very important topic. And I'll pass it off to Cheri to end our 

webinar today.
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Cheri Hoffman: Thanks so much Juliette. Yeah, that was really interesting. I have loved hearing 

all of those different perspectives and I want to thank each of you for bringing 

your experience and your knowledge and your encouragement really to this 

topic. I want to let folks know that the recording and the webinar will be 

available shortly on youth.gov if you know of other folks who you think should 

listen to it. You'll be able to send that around. And if you haven't spent any time 

on youth.gov, there is a place there that you can sign up for a newsletter that 

you would get every couple of weeks from us with more information about 

other webinars and trainings and resources that are available through 

youth.gov. So we really appreciate your partnership in this work and thank you 

for being with us and listening today and we hope to see you again another 

time. Thanks so much.

Speaker 1: Thank you. The webinar will now conclude.