Beyond Intervention: Care Teams, Connection and Violence Prevention

In part two of my conversation with Robert Mahoney, founder of TVP Solutions, we look at what violence prevention can mean in practice.

Robert explains why top-down intervention can sometimes backfire, and why people need a different “landing spot” built around identity, purpose and community. We discuss care teams, information sharing, and how schools and local services can notice different pieces of the picture before someone reaches a formal threshold.

The episode also includes practical examples of prevention in action, from a student who thrived when adults recognised a different side of him, to a community pottery class that helped someone find connection and purpose.

Find out more about Robert’s work here: https://tvtpsolutions.com/

If you enjoy the episode, please follow The Science Intersection, share it with someone who might find it useful, and consider leaving a rating or review.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

In part one, Robert Mahoney talked about pathways to violence, why prevention is often undervalued, and how schools can notice the smaller ripples before crisis. In part two, we move into the harder question. Once someone is struggling, what do we actually do? If a top-down intervention can backfire, what does a better response look like?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

We've moved away from the word intervention for what the reasons that I mentioned. More of an intercession or an interruption. Because I mentioned this sort of these metaphorical buckets of identity, purpose, and community. And those were the things that we sort of latched onto in the beginning, right? Those three intangibles. What we have to do is treat this more as a hostage negotiation. This individual is emotionally and psychologically dependent upon these sort of three things. And they have found those three things in whatever it is that they've attached themselves to. What you have to do is treat this more like, as I said, a negotiation, a hostage negotiation. You have to present a new identity, a new purpose, and a new community that is a landing spot for them to go to, okay? And not just sort of be like, hey, there's a new job opportunity or there's just something here and maybe you'll like it. It has to be, going with that metaphorical sort of bucket sort of analogy, it has to be of the same flow. Okay. They have to see that they are going to have an identity that is equal or greater than what they are getting from this pathway that they're on. They have to see a purpose that is more, that is, that flows into them more than what or a community that is more welcoming than than what they have. That creates a personal power and control mechanism within the brain that says, okay, I now have a landing spot. I don't necessarily need this, and I am the one that's going to make this decision to move off of this pathway and tr and and take this other route. Right?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Why isn't it enough just to tell people to walk away from the harmful thing they've attached themselves to?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

We don't look at it in that sort of way. We don't understand necessarily, you know, the pathway. We don't understand sort of the warning signs. We don't look at the warning signs when we see them in the right context, and then we don't provide a different context for them to sort of land on or get away from. And so we have had a number of attackers who, within their manifestos or in their journal entries, will present a lot of grief and empathy and sorrow and you know, apologize to the families that they are going to hurt, to their family that is going to have to deal with the consequences of their actions and things like that. And that doesn't necessarily line up logically to the general public. Like it's it's it's one of those things that is sort of a mystery to us of like, well, if you knew what you were doing was wrong, why didn't you just jump off? And the reason why is because the human brain finds it completely unacceptable to not know who you are and not know where you belong. And to make that leap into sort of the gray zone and the unknown and try to re-establish your identity and your purpose and your community is just a step too far psychologically and emotionally for us to do that. So we just don't. We just stay on the pathway. And we hope, as many of them do, that our behaviors and our outbursts will create such a disturbance that somebody will sort of come to our aid and help. And when that doesn't happen, we end up finding ourselves sort of in these circumstances where there are they're committing violence. It's an interesting, unique dynamic of security that is that is I would say slightly different and than than your run-of-the-mill things. I think part of the reason why we do things, certain security measures in the way we do things, as I mentioned, sort of the more protection and response methodologies, is a fundamental misunderstanding of how behaviors even even form. We often sort of think that we'll we'll we'll see something, we'll have a thought about something, and then that will materialize into a behavior or an opinion that we have materializes into a behavior. It's actually the direct opposite. We have a feeling about something first that translates into a behavior, and then our thoughts kind of follow at the end. And then what we have to do is we have to sort of go back and sort of post-rationalize our behaviors. One great example of this is wine. Wine always tastes better out of a heavier bottle. Nobody knows why. The idea of you're holding two bottles of wine, one is heavier, you decide basically you're gonna buy the heavier one. You don't really necessarily know why, but you have a feeling that this heavier bottle is going to be a better bottle. And so you do the behavior of buying that bottle. You open it up, you take a drink. Your thoughts on that wine are post-rationalized or directly post-rationalizing your behavior there, right? If that makes sense. And so there's a bunch of these different things that are in the world that we can't necessarily understand behavior because our behavior is not necessarily rational or within certain reasonable things. It's all based upon feeling and context.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

If behavior is shaped by feeling and context, then it seems important not to look at one incident in isolation. Is this why information sharing and care teams matter? Because different people may each hold different parts of the picture.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Well, one of the things that uh at least with the trust factor, is that it's gonna take time. And and there has to be a little bit of an ego check in that mistakes might be made. And I think one of the when we get sort of down to brass tacks and and okay, now we're on this philosophy, we we like it and and we want to implement it. Like what how how should we go about implementing it? And part of it is making sure that it is integrated into just the way that you do business. Um and I think that's sort of the biggest stumbling block for a lot of these different municipal sectors is that the design in which the roles and responsibilities and the design of the system that they are operating in are not necessarily conducive to that sort of information sharing. And because personal information sharing is such a hot topic and such a a slippery slope of, you know, if I give over this, then you're gonna ask for that. And are do you have um the right to know this information or that information and this information? I think part and then what you end up getting is sort of like this mass surveillance state, right? Of you're you're collecting all the information and then trying to sort of pick and choose and filter through that concerning behavior. I think part of how you do it is really just going back to the basics of we talked a little bit earlier about that customer service, like being out front and and having the narrative that you want that space to provide, um, whether it is mental health or or schools or something like that. And and being able to be a conducive environment where punishment is secondary to concerns, right? You are not bringing concerns up for the sake of snitching on somebody or to get somebody in trouble. You are there because you witnessed something or you felt something that needed to be addressed because you thought it was concerning or that you thought that somebody might be struggling in a certain way and you care about them. And so part of the reason why we've sort of moved away from the title of behavioral threat assessment teams and move them to care teams is because it's far more palatable for people to lump all of that sort of stuff into one basket, not have to worry about sort of hyper-specific training of, oh, this wasn't violence related, this was substance abuse related, they have to go on this sort of track of mediation or of intervention, or this wasn't really substance abuse, this was domestic abuse. So that's another track, right? And instead, what you're doing is kind of peeling away all of that specialization and really kind of focusing in on the person, the human-centric things, where you are going up to that person or you are convening sort of a meeting of some sort to just figure out what's going on, right? Or are you okay, or do you need someone to talk to, or just to let them know that if they uh do want to talk, that they have somebody that they can talk to. That seems relatively basic and relatively sort of pie in the sky, but it's also something that everybody kind of wants to have, right? It's everybody kind of wants to have it. In terms of how do you get these different sectors to really begin to start sharing information? One of the things that you have to do without trying to be too bureaucratic about it and create sort of a layer of government that where they have to feed information up into something, right? To then see if there are similarities with an individual. A lot of people have have sort of talked to me about AI being maybe that mechanism that you have sort of an uh an AI system that interacts with all these different sectors, databases, and things like that. And so if somebody gets pinged uh in law enforcement um and is the same person that is has a behavioral problem that mental health was addressing, that those that they each get sort of an email to say, hey, you're talking about the same person, maybe you should collaborate. I'm a little bit hesitant on on creating that sort of supervisory sort of mechanism, but I do think that there is value in bringing those sectors into an overall team where they are kind of sharing either caseloads or just sort of pertinent information that that may um lead to to the sharing of information. Some of the information, however, will not be violence related. And I think that's where where we might get into some stumbling blocks. So I have created sort of these care teams in a bunch of different municipalities, and we have brought the sanitation department in, and we've brought the Department of Rec in, and we've brought small business associations into those teams. We brought bus drivers into some of the school care teams, and what they found were individuals who were being picked up or dropped off at a different stop, um, and come to find out that there was some some substance abuse that was happening on in that house. That's not a violence-related line, right? But that was something that needed to be addressed.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

So the bus driver example shows how care teams can spot things that might otherwise be missed. So, what can care teams or other teams do once they know there's a problem? What kind of practical support can they actually provide that can change the direction that things are going in?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So there there was a student who was having a lot of different behavioral problems within a school, a lot of different outbursts towards teachers, other staff, had been sort of isolated by other students due to certain grievances that were expressed, whether it was pol I think political and and sort of religious and and and things like that against certain groups, um, had been punished a bit. And so the school was looking in the context of like this individual who obviously has some major issues and they were they were punishing that individual accordingly. The the school then sort of became part of uh one of the municipal care teams or behavioral threat assessment teams that that the municipality set up. And ended up realizing that this individual after school would go to a department of recreation sort of camp, uh, after school camp and things like that. And there was a nature sort of element to to this camp where they were sort of in the woods and they were doing things with uh in the forest and and learning about trees and plants and and horticulture and all this other stuff kind of stuff. And through that care team, they realized like this individual was thought to be an absolute dream that they were responding to this program amazingly well. And they were becoming sort of a mentor to other kids that were younger than than they were, and showing them all the different lessons and and really creating a really fun environment at this department of rec sort of thing. And so they began to sort of talk to to the individual and just kind of ended up realizing that sort of sitting in a classroom every day and and having to having sort of maybe undiagnosed sort of attention issues and things like that were just making it very, very frustrating to to that individual. And kids being kids, they weren't the other students weren't quite as as empathetic to this person's struggles as as maybe one should be. And so that created a lot of anger and angst and and grievance towards other students. Because of the class size, the and the the requirements that the teacher had to do in terms of lesson planning and stuff like that, there wasn't a lot of time to give individual attention to this to this student, too. So there's that sort of this compounding sort of thing grievance of you know, you're you're you're getting kind of teased or or not having a good time uh with the with the kids in your class, and your teacher doesn't really have the capacity to to iron it out for you. And so it just became a a very difficult place for this individual to be and a not very welcoming place. But then when they get outside and it's a completely different environment, and it's a different learning environment, different sort of individuals, and there's more time and everything else, they thrived. And so I think that's a perfect story of sort of, you know, we were mentioning of just sort of having these slivers of information and and having these certain contextual narratives within a certain sector and not really looking at the holistic sort of uh experience that that these individuals are having on a day-to-day basis. And so what they were able to do is they were able to kind of adjust this individual's schedule so that they had a little bit more time. They were able to take some breaks in between. He was allowed to um present, uh he brought his class uh outside and it was able to s present to his class some of the things that he had learned at this rec sort of uh program and things like that. So it gave him that sort of, we've talked about sort of the identity, the purpose in the community, right? It really reshaped his place within within the school community and really gave him an identity because people recognized that he had a real talent for this sort of you know outdoors, forestry kind of thing, and that created a sense of pride and a purpose for him. And uh and as such, like his behavioral problems kind of went away, right? Because they this place, the the more traditional school environment that he had became a place where it wasn't as as constricting and it wasn't a place that he dreaded going uh time and time again.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

So in that story, the extra piece of information was positive. Another setting showed that he could thrive when the environment and role changed. But what happens when the pieces of information are more concerning? So when they sit across different systems, school, mental health, law enforcement, or local services, is one of the biggest issues that each part of the system may only see one piece of the picture.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

The the biggest issue is that we kind of create um through context these environments where we just begin to sort of miss all these different very telling signs and we don't put the whole puzzle together. And so, at least here in the United States, you know, I work with all, as you mentioned in the intro, I work with a bunch of cross-sector sort of uh uh different groups and things like that. Well, law enforcement has, you know, a part of the puzzle and some information on this individual mental health and and public health may have a certain thing, and then schools or jobs may have a different context and certain things that that are in, but none of them are really talking to one another. And so what you have is sort of this information dump into a sector that is relatively rigid in structure, that is not necessarily designed for coordination. Um, and they have developed a sort of threshold mentality of we can respond if and when a certain threshold is triggered. So um, if you go to law enforcement, they will ask you, have they done anything illegal? And if you say no, not yet, well, then what do you want us to do about it? Right? Like we just have a structure that's in place that we deal with. When it gets over that threshold, we'll do something, right? And so they kind of sit on that information. Mental and public health, same sort of thing. Are they a threat to themselves or others? Well, no, not yet. All right, we'll get in the back of the line because I have a stack of people that are, and I've only got a limited amount of clinicians, so that you're just gonna kind of have to wait unless that that threshold gets triggered. Same thing with the education sector and and and with jobs and certain things like this, with codes of conduct and and and all and a whole life. And so that makes it very, very difficult when you're trying to do sort of an intercession um on an individual that is that is heading down the pathway of violence because everybody, all those different sectors are only dealing with maybe one-fourth or one-sixteenth of the information uh and the context in which that individual is is living in.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

So formal systems often have to wait until a threshold is crossed. What can help before that point? So, for example, do you have an example where an everyday community connection made a difference?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

So a gentleman up in I think northern New Hampshire who was sort of around town, kind of causing a bit of a commotion, you know, saying some things, shouting, you know, different things, uh political things out on the uh street of this small, very small town. Wasn't doing anything illegal, but was just kind of being a disturbance. And um, there was a woman who owned a pottery shop and she did classes at night for people who are interested in in learning how to do pottery. And on a whim, she went up and she just kind of bravely struck up a conversation with this individual and invited him to her class uh one night and told him that, you know, they were gonna have, you know, refreshments there. There was gonna be some food and some drinks, and that they all just kind of chit-chat and they they work on their pottery projects and everything else. And it just hit, you know, it was a very serendipitous kind of thing, and he agreed to to go. And, you know, there were other things within this guy's life. He was going through apparently a a pretty nasty divorce, and and there was, you know, his kids were older and they were really affected by it, and he was having problems at his work because of, you know, the family life, and and that made him increasingly angry, and obviously there were some financial stuff with everything else. And so you can sort of see how these things kind of just built up and and up to to getting to the point where he's beginning to sort of to do these outbursts and things like that. Um but that sort of subtle invitation uh he he took her up on the offer and now he works for her, right? He he works at the pottery shop and he has you know become sort of a a I wouldn't say a master of it, but he is doing he is taking over the course, the classes at night for her to give her a little bit of a night off. Uh, and he's found a completely new purpose, right? He's completely found a new identity in this and an and a community that accepts him, and he has been able to forge different relationships out of that that sort of thing. And so not everything is sort of your classic intervention or intercession, as I've sort of mentioned, right? And and so you as much as it might sound ridiculous to sort of leave these things up to serendipity, just asking somebody how they're doing, or um if they are okay, if they need anything, or if they want to talk about anything that you are there, that that sort of you know, circle of trust, that that that element of of being there for somebody really, really goes a long way.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

That was Robert Mahoney, founder of TVP Solutions. Thanks to Robert for such an interesting discussion. For me, one of the key takeaways is that violence prevention is not about reacting to danger once it's obvious, it's about noticing smaller signs of struggle, understanding the context around behaviour, and creating better routes back into identity, purpose, and community. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the science intersection, share it with someone who might find it useful, and consider leaving a rating or a view. You can also support the podcast through the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.