Sworn Public Safety Employee Mental Health

Audit ATX speaks with Auditor Mariel Dempster to talk about efforts surrounding mental health services in the City’s Public Safety departments.

Transcript available on Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1419979/19555789-sworn-public-safety-employee-mental-health/transcript

Transcript

Sam: Welcome, audit enthusiasts and fellow Austinites, to another episode of Audit ATX. 

Maxx: The podcast that dives deep into audits and investigations our office does to make Austin better for all residents. 

Sam: We're your hosts: Sam 

Maxx: and Maxx. 

Sam: Welcome, Audit ATX listeners. Today we're here with Auditor Mariel Dempster to talk about a recent audit that our office conducted. This audit goes into efforts surrounding mental health services in the city's public safety departments. Welcome, Mariel; it's great to have you back on the podcast.

Guest: Thanks. It's great to be here.

Sam: Perfect. So to kick us off here, can you walk us through the objective of this audit as well as why it was conducted?

Guest: Sure. So the basic goal of this audit was pretty straightforward. We wanted to understand whether the city is really supporting the mental health of its sworn public safety employees. So to help public safety employees, the city does already offer several support resources. So we were really, with this audit, looking at whether those support services are meeting the employees' needs.

Sam: Thanks for setting that up for us. What additional background on this topic should our listeners be aware of?

Guest: So the three public safety departments are the Austin Fire Department, the Austin Police Department, and the Austin Travis County EMS Department. And as you know, those jobs are really inherently very high stress. And they have some exposure to traumatic incidents. They might be responding to violence or fatalities and serious injuries. That's a daily reality for them. And then on top of that, they're working really long hours and a regular schedules. We saw that research shows that first responders are more at risk for serious mental health impacts when compared to the general public. When public safety employees aren't well, it can affect their safety, their ability to do their job safely, and therefore the safety of the people of Austin. So this audit is really not just about the individual safety of our employees, which is extremely important, but also about community safety, too.

Sam: Gotcha. Definitely hear you about the demanding and at times, traumatic nature of the work that our public safety employees do, as well as how that translates to their performance and in turn, the welfare of residents. Can you walk us through what the team looked at, as well as the steps that were taken to complete the work? 

Guest: Sure. Because this topic is so complex, we also had to look across multiple agencies and multiple angles, and we really wanted to hear directly from people doing the work. With that in mind. We interviewed staff and leadership across the three departments. We talked to staff from wellness Services. We reviewed policies and training practices. We did analyze relevant data. And most importantly, in my opinion, we surveyed over seven hundred and fifty sworn employees.

Sam: So clearly, the team did a lot of great work here. So let's go over the findings now. I see that there were a couple of them in the report here. So can you start us off with the first one?

Guest: Sure. Yeah. Like you said, we had two main findings and one additional observation. Overall, we saw that a lot of the resources we have, the supports we have mirror what other peer cities are doing and what we identified as best practices. From the survey we conducted, we saw that employees really did use the services. Over fifty percent said they had used services in the past, and over eighty five percent said they knew how to get help when they needed it. But we also saw that employees might not feel comfortable or confident using resources, and some had concerns about the confidentiality of services or afraid that using services might have a negative impact on their careers. We also heard that some of the root causes of stress things like their schedules, sleep disruption, staffing shortages, high call volumes have a really, really intense impact on their mental health, but the wellness supports and programs aren't necessarily going to address those issues.

Sam: It sounds like it's a good thing that many employees are using the services, but totally hear you on the concerns about them as well as other circumstances at play here. Can you go over the next finding with us?

Guest: Sure. In our second finding, we saw that there are a lot of similar resources being offered across departments, but sometimes their implementation varied. Um, we saw this most clearly when we're looking at peer support teams. They varied pretty greatly in terms of, you know, staffing, training levels and resources when we looked between departments. So for one example, EMS peer support teams had only had one training during the scope period. While the APD peer support teams had regular periodic training throughout our scope. And then the other part of this was that the proactive efforts that are used to get ahead of mental health issues that are offered could be improved. You know, employees are going to experience potentially traumatic incidents, and there are some processes for following up after them. But we saw that that was somewhat inconsistent and many employees reported that they rarely or never received any kind of follow up after a major incident. We also saw, in terms of proactive efforts, the fire department was the only one that conducts routine mental health screenings for all of its employees. So that could be a missed opportunity for providing proactive support. And then lastly, we also saw that the continuing education and awareness around mental health is somewhat spotty. So there are education efforts during academies. But after that, many employees don't get a lot of training or the training that is offered is not super well attended. Generally, this sort of leads to the concern that employees might fall through the cracks, or you might get different support depending on what department you're in.

Sam: Thanks for that recap here. Clearly, there are some similarities and differences among the three public safety agencies in these areas. As you mentioned, there is an additional observation here, and I see that it's about the wellness Center. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about that?

Guest: Sure. So yeah, there is a public safety wellness center that's currently available to all public safety employees, and that does unify some of the resources that are provided at the city. When we visited the the current center, we noted that it was somewhat outdated, and we noted some privacy concerns with the space that may not be super welcoming for a wellness healing space. We looked at the plans for the new wellness Center, and we saw that it does provide adequate space for all the services that will be offered and will may provide some improved privacy features and a more comfortable environment for wellness services.

Sam: Glad to hear that there should be some improvements with the new Wellness Center. What recommendations were issued to the department based on the findings?

Guest: So we made five recommendations. And they're all sort of tied towards strengthening trust and consistency, creating more proactive support. Um, the first recommendation was around, like I said, strengthening the privacy and confidentiality protections. The second recommendation was to create clear and consistent procedures for follow up after critical incidents. The third recommendation was to improve peer support, team training and consistency. Our fourth recommendation was to explore the possibility of additional proactive mental health assessments for APD and EMS employees. And then the fifth recommendation was to provide consistent mental health education throughout employees careers, not just at the beginning during Academy. 

Sam: Well, Mariel, thanks for taking the time to come on the podcast to discuss this important work with us. We look forward to having you back sometime soon.

Guest: Thanks, Sam. It was great to talk to you about it.

Maxx: Thanks for listening to this episode of ATX. For more information about this report, you can visit our website at austintexas.gov/auditor or shoot us an email at austinauditor@austintexas.gov. 

Sam: Or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X @AustinAuditor and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcast.