Understaffed and Undersupported Detectives in Crisis

In this episode of “One in Ten,” host Teresa Huizar speaks with Dr. Lisa Nichols, an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado, to discuss the challenges faced by child abuse detectives. The episode delves into the complexities and emotional toll of child sexual abuse investigations, highlighting findings from Dr. Nichols' study. Key themes include understaffing, high turnover, funding issues, the emotional impact on detectives, and communication challenges with Child Protective Services (CPS). Dr. Nichols emphasizes the need for better support and resources, including culturally competent mental health services, to improve the wellbeing and effectiveness of these law enforcement professionals. 

Time Stamps: 

00:00 Introduction: Detectives in Crisis 

02:10 Interview with Dr. Lisa Nichols 

04:00 Study Design and Methodology 

06:09 Key Findings: Funding and Emotional Toll 

15:13 Challenges of High Turnover 

31:42 Communication Issues with CPS 

39:08 Implications for Policy and Practice 

42:56 Conclusion and Final Thoughts 

Resources:

“It’s Like We Never See the Light at the End of the
Tunnel”: Law Enforcement Perceptions on Stakeholder
Collaboration and Resources at CACs in a Southern
State; Journal of Child Sexual Abuse; February 2025

Transcript

Teresa Huizar:   Hi, I'm Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today's episode, Understaffed and Undersupported: Detectives in Crisis, I speak with Dr. Lisa Nichols, assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado. Child Sexual Abuse is by its very nature a criminal act, and one that with rare exception, requires a law enforcement investigation.  

And despite what you see on TV and in movies, those depictions are not real. The work isn't well-resourced, it's not full of DNA miracles, and it's not full of vicarious trauma interventions. No, as you will hear, it's more in the nature of unsung heroics, ruling caseloads, and never enough investigators. 

Dr. Nichols set out to talk to law enforcement investigators about their work and what their unique challenges and struggles were in hopes of better supporting their role on the MDT. But what I was most struck by in the findings was their candor and vulnerability about the emotional toll of the work.  

The part that is less talked about, but has the most impact at home and in their own sense of wellbeing. We ask law enforcement to hear the worst stories, see the worst physical evidence, and interview the worst offenders. What is our responsibility to them to ensure that they have the crucial resources that they need, they deserve better. So that they're healthier, yes, but also so that they can continue to give their best to kids and to cases. 

To those law enforcement who taught me so much early in my career while facing all of the challenges that that role entails. Rusty, Robbie, Al, so many others, you know who you are. Thank you. I hope that this episode provokes not only thoughts and thanks, but also concrete support for our invaluable partners in this work. 

Please take a listen.  

Hi Lisa. Welcome to one in 10.  

Lisa Nichols: Hi, Teresa. It's great to see you.  

TH: So I'm wondering how you came to this work, really looking at law enforcement and their perceptions of their work with multidisciplinary teams and CACs.  

LN: Yes. So my work with the CACs goes back to the very beginning of my counseling career. 

My graduate school internship was at the CAC in Houston, and that was the first time that I knew what a multidisciplinary team was and worked with one and had the opportunity to work with detectives and child protective service workers, and I was immediately hooked, immediately loved the mission and the MDT, and knew that I wanted to keep doing this. 

So after finishing my master's and working on my counseling license, then I landed at another CAC up in North Texas and spent a number of years there. And again, it was those experiences where I was working with the MDT, working with child abuse detectives, really getting a glimpse of the difficult work that they do and the decisions that they have to make. 

And it that just always stuck with me. So then as I went back to school and got my PhD and was working on research, that was something I wanted to continue to look at and to really continue to study to see how I could offer some advocacy and some solutions for law enforcement who investigate these cases. 

TH: There's certainly a critical part of our multidisciplinary team, and I just love the fact that you've carried this thread with you for many years, actually, which is wonderful. It's always a pleasure to talk to any researcher, but especially those that really come from a background in good grounding in the work of CACs.  

So can you just talk a little bit about the way the study was designed and one of the things I really loved about it is that was a multi-site study as well.  

LN: Sure. So this was a study that was partnered with the CACs of Texas and with Texas Christian University, their Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. 

I'm an alum, I'm a TCU alum, and so it was fun to connect back with them and work on this project together. And the first part of it was a mixed method study. And so in 2022, I wasn't part of the study at that point, but they released different surveys and questionnaires and those were sent to detectives all over Texas. 

And they filled out the surveys and the last question was, if you'd be interested in participating in an interview, please leave your phone number. So I believe we had almost 200 who participated in the survey. Out of that, there were just under 50 who volunteered for the interview process, and this was also during COVID, so the study was impacted by that for sure.  

But once I started contacting detectives to participate in the interviews, we had 20 interviews. The study represented over 15 CACs in the state, which was really an amazing opportunity to connect with that many different CACs in such a large state.  

TH: Yeah, we'll talk about this in a minute, but it, it allowed you to really find some themes in the data that would've been harder to do, I think, that in terms of being able to generalize more from them, if it had simply been one site, and you know, I know that CACs of Texas has for some time been really focused on the functioning of multidisciplinary teams and trying to enhance that in every possible way. And so it's really wonderful to see this research collaboration sort of focused on this particular MDT partner and making sure that they're getting what they need and being adequately supported.  

So I'm curious if you had any particular hypotheses going into the study. Did you think you would find certain things just based on the prior survey data that you had access to? Or were you surprised really by your findings? And we'll get into those findings in just a moment.   

LN: Sure. You know, I would say both. It's definitely expected to hear about turnover and how that contributes to job stress. Also, the stigma that exists within many, many different fields, but also very prominently in law enforcement. The stigma of asking for help, of accessing resources that are designed to help with job stress. 

So I knew that those were some things that were probably going to come out. Funding problems. You know, I knew that would probably come out, but then I was surprised at not even just some of the themes that came out, but of the vulnerability of some of the participants. Some of them just said some things that just stopped me in my tracks. 

They were just very vulnerable. They were very powerful and impactful about how they are impacted by their work.   

TH: You know, I definitely wanted to turn to that in a minute as one of the themes, and I think one of the things that I was struck by and, you know, having been a center director myself and worked with multidisciplinary team members myself, it took me back to those years a little bit in terms of, I think that the general public may not realize... 

I'm sure they don't realize overall what a hard job law enforcement is, but investigating child abuse is one of the hardest jobs there is. It's just so difficult in so many different ways. And so when I was reading your study, it just brought me back to so many individual conversations that I've had with detectives over time across the two different centers that I led and really resonated and rang true and authentic to me.  

I just appreciated the fact that it was highlighting and bringing to attention some of these things that undoubtedly need more attention than they've gotten. I wanna sort of, I know you impact in your findings, five different themes and I wanna take them one by one. But I wanna start, you kinda started with funding and I wanna talk about that because I think that everybody, no matter what profession you're in, if you ask them, do you have enough funding? They'd say, no, there's never enough. There's never enough. But I thought what law enforcement had to say about the way in which inadequate funding affects their work was really interesting. And so can you talk a little bit about, you know, not only the fact that they perceive it to be inadequate, but what do they see as the downstream effects on cases, on themselves, on the system as a whole for the fact that it is inadequate? 

LN: Sure. I think that the participants did a really good job of really, like you said, describing how that impacts their day-to-day work and the impact that these daily interactions, these daily tasks, how that impacts deeper things like morale and a sense of being able to do your job. So they definitely talked about not just the high number of cases within their caseload, but without funding to hire more detectives there, they were doing the job of two, three, or four detectives. Really. And the way that the turnover contributed to that too is, you are a detective. You're already working a job of 3, 4, 5 other detectives, and then you have people leaving. Now you're taking on more. And they talked about, it's not even just the number of the cases, it's how specialized they are, how much time is involved. 

Many of them said, this is just as complex as working a murder case. And so all of those just daily things trying to manage the caseload with turnover happening that impacted the competence that they had in themselves to do their jobs, to feel like they were serving the abused child and the abused children's family members. 

It really impacted them in that personal way too, of feeling like “I'm not doing as good of a job as I could be doing because we don't have the manpower to support the work that needs to be done.”  

TH: Well, I think one of the things that struck me about that quote where someone was talking about doing, just as you're saying, they had 10 or 20 or maybe even 30 child abuse cases that they were involved in. And just the sort of enormity of that. I mean, there are two things. One, we wouldn't expect somebody to be working 30 murder cases at once. Right? I mean, that would be mind boggling when you think about how all consuming that kind of work is. 

But what I was struck by too, and I really appreciate the quotes that you included in the paper, was people feel like they're letting down the child victims and the families in some way when they can't do the high quality work they would like to do because of the sheer volume.   

LN: Right. Well, I think that's one of the things that makes this so unique and needs to be studied more is because we're not just talking about numbers. 

You know, these are children and these are children who have gone through the most horrific thing, and the detectives, you know, they choose to do this work and they care very much about the children and about the issue, and so they want to do things correctly. They very much put that pressure on themselves of you cannot screw up this case because it impacts the child. 

It impacts other children. You know, nobody wants the “bad guy” to go free. So I think that is something that is very unique about this work is we're not just talking about the numbers were wrong, or the reports were wrong, these are children and that's the most sacred thing.  

TH: You know, these cases and their complexity was something that the detectives that you interviewed seemed to talk about over and over again. 

Just the sheer ways in which they're complex for so many reasons. The evidence collection, the witness for those that you have to talk to, of course, the kids themselves and what that brings to bear. The fact that there may be electronic components to it and images and all of those things. 

What I'm wondering is when you think about that issue around complexity and the specialization of it, what is it that you think the detectives feel that needs a greater recognition by all of us, both as allied professionals, but also in the general public that would have no idea? 

LN: Right. Well, one of the things that the participants talked about was having a sense that their command staff, that their administration understands how complex these cases are. 

And it's not just the number of cases, it's how traumatizing these cases are, how awful this content is that they're having to look at and study, and I don't think anyone is aware. Certainly, I wasn't either until I was told that one participant investigated internet crimes against children and said with one case he had to review over a hundred thousand images, and I just can't imagine the horror of that. 

And then my counseling psychology background kicks in of like, well, we know what that does to somebody we know how that impacts them and how that traumatizes them. So I don't think the public is aware of how awful, how extensive this content is, and how disturbing it is. They definitely talked about you can't make this stuff go away in your head.  

These are the things that none of us wanna think about and most of us don't ever have to think about. And they do. They have to get in there and they have to see that and hear that, and then see the child, and then see the family, see the perpetrators. So I think that they definitely want to feel like their administration and the public understands better of just this awfulness that they have to deal with and that they have to just expose themselves to.  

TH: I want to talk a little bit more about the emotional toll in a moment, but I think that that is so true that if command staff really doesn't understand this, then they're not going to resource things or prioritize for resourcing these particular units. And for a small law enforcement where there's not a specialized unit, these particular positions. 

And so many of the things that we're talking about, one has a compounding effect on another. We'll talk about the domain or the theme that they were talking about, but then that sort of translates into an intersection with one of your other findings. And that's a good segue to talking a little bit about this piece around high turnover and other personnel needs because this seemed to come up a lot and it seemed to have a lot of different causes. And so even though those of us who work at CACs would be able to talk about some of those things as well, not all our listeners work at CACs. And so can you just talk for those folks who haven't read the article yet, I hope everyone will, but who haven't, what is driving all the turnover and why did this come up as a major theme within your findings?   

LN: Yes, the participants have talked about with turnover specifically the impact of their leadership, not communicating a sense that they support them, that they understand how difficult the work is.  

Sometimes it's a lack of resources so that they can cope with the work that they're doing and the vicarious trauma that they're experiencing. And kind of deeper than that too, is many times the resources are there, but there's that stigma of you need to be strong and not need that help and not need that support. 

And I thought it was really fascinating that there's this kind of spoken and unspoken thing among detectives that one participant shared. People will tell you, you know, go, go investigate child abuse, but you gotta go after two years. Like, it's just too awful. Too horrible. Go do your two years and then you've gotta go. You've gotta get out of there. And I think that really speaks to how difficult this is, how impactful this is. Go do it for a couple of years and then you've gotta get out of it for your own sanity. So the turnover also, gosh, it contributes to, they've gotta retrain new people every time. And because this is such specialized detective investigative work, once someone is two years in, they're just now learning, how to do that, the nuances of those interviews, of how to work these cases, and then they leave and so then all that experience walks out the door as one of the participants said, so then they've gotta retrain people.  

TH: This piece of it really resonated with all that I hear from the CAC side. You know, CAC leaders and CAC staff are frustrated with the turnover in law enforcement because these are their close partners that they rely on. And when the team changes, because a great detective up and leaves, it really shifts the dynamic of the team and you've gotta train a new person all over again, not just about child abuse and child abuse investigations, but about how to work in a team environment, what the CAC model is, you know, as you're saying about forensic interviewing and how that works.  

If every time someone starts getting good at their job, they're replaced.  It's like Groundhog Day all over again. And it's hard to make any real traction. And what I was struck by, as you were talking about the way in which the emotional toll plays into this. I mean, one of the things that we know about PTSD, for example, is that avoidance is a maladaptive strategy. 

So basically all of your fellow detectives are telling you, when you start experiencing the emotional toll of this, the thing to do is get out. Because that's what they did.  Are we actually helping people or are we reinforcing them in not needing to recognize the impact of secondary traumatic stress and not actually having to deal with that and address that instead, just avoid it, you know? 

I think in some ways we're inculcating a maladaptive coping strategy in people, and I worry about that in terms of what that really means, because when someone gets rotated out, I doubt it comes with six months of counseling. Do you know what I mean?   

LN: Right. And it should. My gosh.  

TH: Yeah, and like it's just turnover. They just get transferred on to burglaries or homicide or whatever. It's not like suddenly, oh good, you've done your two-year stint. Now let's make sure that you're feeling good and able to go on. Instead it's just like, well tomorrow roll call. You know? Which is just a whole different thing.  

LN: Well, I think too that it's not only when there's turnover, but just the way that they have to move from case to case to case. 

And they in essence, move from trauma to trauma to trauma. And there isn't a point where it's like, stop, let's see if you're okay. And we expect that you wouldn't be. There's such a need for these things to be normalized of, you know, you can't look at over a hundred thousand images of child sexual abuse and not be impacted. 

And not be impacted in a horrible, dark way. And so I agree with you and participants have said that too. The culture needs to shift, you know, it needs to be okay to talk about these things and it needs to be done in a proactive way. So one of the participants talked about, you know, creating as part of the new hire and as part of the learning how a CAC works and how to work within the CAC model. 

Prepare detectives for how this is gonna impact them emotionally. Tell them that it's going to impact them emotionally and prepare them for that and give them examples of common feelings and common difficulties and what it looks like in your personal life when you're hearing this and you're experiencing vicarious trauma and you're trying to cope with it and you're trying to avoid it. 

And I think, it's just very much, law enforcement is a male dominated field, and so we know that men are less likely to seek out counseling. Men are, I think very much we socialize our boys to not talk about their feelings and to keep those inside and to be strong. And I don't think that it's a surprise that then when we have these male dominated fields, that we have professionals who don't know how to even identify it within themselves that they are struggling, that it's normal. That it's okay to ask for that help and to seek that out.   

TH: It seems to me, you know, when I think back to the multidisciplinary teams that I worked with, I mean, I think that for so many team members, not just detectives, but I think especially detectives, often they found the CACs very safe place for themselves. 

And you would see them reaching out to CAC staff individuals, whether they were mental health folks or victim advocates or forensic interviewers. And in some ways, if you think about it, it's like it was an informal support system, but if what you're experiencing is significant enough that you need professional help, then well, those supports are good. 

They're not a replacement for that. Right? For a formal intervention.  

LN: Right, and I think that speaks to that informal peer support, which is definitely something that is helpful, that is supportive when you have that sense of comradery and these people understand, these people get it, they just heard the awful thing that I heard also, and there is a sense of connecting and bonding and support that's there that you can't get any other way. 

That can be toxic in and of itself too, if we're re-traumatizing each other in our conversations. And one participant talks about cops love to one-up each other. And so they start talking and telling stories and they end up trying to, okay, well this is the worst thing I heard, or this is what happened next for me. 

And they're kind of re-traumatizing each other. And there isn't that recognition of, that's helpful to have that peer support, but the type of trauma that they are hearing about,  you know, 30, 60 different cases, there are professional interventions that can be helpful and some participants have talked about some of those things, like of course, individual counseling, relationship counseling because of how this work impacts their relationships, things like EMDR to help specifically with getting those images out of their heads. So there are some ways that detectives, that police officers tell us are helpful. And I think what's so important is there's not a one size fits all. There's gotta be this focus and funding and priority on let's have all of these resources here.  

Then allow the individual to choose what they need and when they need it.   

TH: I think that there's a lot to unpack there, 'cause we're rolling into the emotional toll component, which frankly I found personally one of the most compelling parts of the paper and its findings because we think so much of the folks who do this tough investigative work and appreciate everything they do, and we know the way in which it wears down on them and the emotional weight and told that this work can take. 

One of the things I was struck by though was just how self-aware they were. They really were tuned into their own feelings and the way it was infecting their work. Now, whether that's because that was being reflected back to them at home or by their coworkers or other things, I was just really struck by the vulnerability of it. 

And also that they could pinpoint what the problem was and one of the quotes that stuck out in my mind is when one of them said, you know, basically what they didn't need was, and I'm paraphrasing here. But not an attaboy from their supervisor, they needed a list of 10 therapists that would take their insurance. 

LN: Right. I just loved that and I loved the rawness of that comment. You know, and we kind of have these things that we do in our culture of, let me send an email and, maybe it's well-meaning, let me send an email to everybody. The best way to reach everyone at once. But I just loved how that participant said that of like, I don't need that. You know, I need a list of counselors that are accepting your insurance right now. And accessing mental health services is difficult for anyone. I'm a counselor, and that is a barrier of how do I find a counselor and how do I find one who accepts my insurance? 

And then again, what's unique for child abuse detectives is not only do you have to, as one participant said, find four or five hours in your day to make all of those phone calls, but you've gotta find a culturally competent counselor. So someone who, you as a detective can go in and talk to, and you aren't having to take care of the counselor because of what you just shared, of what you saw in your work. 

And that's such an important factor for them too, of having professional care that is culturally competent, that's trained in this is how police officers respond to stress typically, these are the types of things that they see, and not having to worry about: Great. I shared this with my counselor and now my counselor's crying and now I've gotta take care of that.  

TH: I mean, I would hope that as more and more therapists are so aware of the ubiquity of trauma and get trained in trauma interventions, hopefully that won't be such an issue. But I think it's true that the graphic nature of what people see and have to describe in some cases because it's popping up in their nightmares, they're popping up when they're intimate. All of these things to talk about that with honesty means talking about really graphic things. And I think in some ways that therapists that see children are more likely to have been trained in an evidence supported treatment for trauma that in many cases, adults are. 

So I think there is this disconnect that you're pointing out that you need several things. First, you need to be trained in an evidence-based intervention for adults that have been exposed to traumatic material, right? And may have been traumatized themselves by that exposure. Then on top of that, you need somebody who understands police culture. And somebody who understands child abuse investigations a little bit, and by the time you get down to the list of all the things you need them to understand, right, it's highly specialized work. So wouldn't this be a call out there for some folks to take up, you know, that kind of specialty work? 

Because I think it's just critical. One of the other things, and I'd be interested in your thought about this. I always think, of course it's so good to have multiple options for people and for people to have the ability to select what works for them when they need it.  

These kinds of things. But I also think there's this human tendency when you need something the most, to sometimes avoid it, not ask for it, especially in an environment in which, as your paper pointed out, there's a lot of stigma associated with seeking help. And so I wonder how to juggle that, the fact that we wanna have more options and we want to have them to be appropriately tailored to the law enforcement environment. 

But if you just leave it up to people and say, sure. When you're done with tough cases, any old time you come down to the therapist office and talk to them, are people gonna go?   

LN: And it depends on the people. This is what I'm learning. So I have learned about peer support programs within law enforcement agencies and so they do a lot of things, and I would say one of the things that they do is try to bridge that gap there. 

And so let's not wait for someone to have to figure out, you know, okay, I need to go ask for help, and how do I do that? Let's go to them first. So, you know, identifying if there's a critical incident, we know the peer support team is going to reach out to them because they know that officer or that detective, something has happened that day or something that's unusual has happened. 

And I think that the same could be said for child abuse detectives, except that it's like probably every day. You can't force it upon them because then most, you know, none of us want things forced upon us. But I have had participants say, but I do think some of this needs to be mandatory, or we will just avoid it. 

If they don't make us do it, we will just avoid it. And I think we're all that way too.   

TH: I mean, you don't have to be a detective to avoid a painful conversation. That's all of humanity. Take to get any person into counseling. Right. It's gotta be something that is starting to become uncomfortable enough that, or a problem you can't solve on your own. 

But I think you raise an interesting point. I do wonder if whatever we call it, and however it's structured.  You know, there are professions where after some critical incident people must without a choice, go to some sort of debriefing. And I think there's discussion about what that could look like or who should be doing it and what should consist of, and making sure that it's not making the situation worse and not better. But it does make me wonder if maybe we've been a little slow to think about that because we are reluctant. And also just in terms of sort of therapist ethics. We don't wanna coerce people into counseling. No, it doesn't work. And it wouldn't be a good idea if it did work. 

Right. But at the same time, like what can be done to say, I know you don't think you need this, but the fact that you don't think you need it might mean you need it. You're not in a place to make a good judgment about that. So I don't know. It's something for us to all think about. But now I wanna pivot a little bit. 

We've been talking about just the heart of this and it's so fascinating, but I do, you know, your paper covered a couple of other things, so I don't wanna lose the opportunity to talk to you about them. One of them was communication issues. This was a theme that came up and what was interesting to me, although not in any way surprising to me, is that it came up kind of in the context most often of the relationship with CPS. And so talk about that a little bit. You know, what is that sort of ongoing tension about I think every CAC director's nodding their head because we've all dealt with it from time to time. But yeah. What did they tell you it was about? 

LN: So they talked about the tension that exists between Child Protective Services and law enforcement and child abuse detectives. And my interpretation of what they shared is that they're both, they're both putting together a puzzle that they care very passionately about, and it's very specialized, but they're doing it with a separate set of instructions. 

So CPS’s instructions are different from law enforcement. Their deadlines are different, their workflow is different. The way they define things is different. The way that they investigated, all of it is very different, but there's an overlap in what they're doing. And you know, we have two systems, right? 

We have Child Protective Services where they're also very underfunded, high turnover, high stress. Everything that we just said about detectives, we could say about people who are working for Child Protective Services, the vicarious trauma that they're experiencing all the time. And I think also my opinion, that's also a profession where a lot of people don't like CPS workers. And I think there's the more, more and more recently of this trend of people not liking police officers. And so we have these two fields where they’re are highly stressed, they're underpaid, there's high turnover. They're both going through this trauma all the time, and then they're conflicting with each other.  

So law enforcement would talk about what, I've had bad experiences with CPS and a lot of it had to do with the turnover is, I don't know, when I go in for a forensic interview, there's a different CPS worker every time, or you know, just these really strong emotions of why are you even here, you're not going to do anything about this. 

And I think when we look at the depth of that emotion there, you know, that really speaks to that tension. And I think that speaks to, we're both trying to help a child, but we've gotta do it different ways. And when there's that high turnover, there are no relationships, there's no relationship building, there's no rapport building, or you're having to do it over and over every time. 

And that's exhausting. So those are some of the things that they shared about that communication. But what I think is really interesting about that is these two professions had a lot in common, and then I think it's also not surprising that they would have tension between each other.  

TH: As you were talking, I was thinking, you know, considering all they have to contend with all the things you've talked about so far, the emotion just strikes me as coming from a place of, you are asking one traumatized professional to deal with another traumatized professional in the most high stakes sort of cases that we get, right? Ones that are around child safety and so I think it's a miracle they get along as well as they do, given everything we have to contend with. 

But you point out something that I think is really humanizing. Which if you stop looking for differences, which is where a lot of these conversations start, at least in my experience with my own teams, they would start from my, well, they do this and we do that, and they have this mandate, and I have this one. 

But if you start from a place of, what's common between you, right? Your commitment to child safety, the fact that you want the best for these kids, the fact that you want this case to progress, well, whatever. All the things, there's more commonality than I think we give each other credit for in all of it. 

LN: Absolutely. And I think you bring up a really important point too, and as someone who worked in different CACs, so was a traumatized individual doing that work, I think I, I had the benefit also, one of the CACs I worked at, their CPS unit, their specialized unit, they had worked in those roles for 20 plus years. 

And so then when you have CPS workers who have 20 plus years careers in this field, detectives 20 plus years to 30 plus years there, there was the opportunity to build those relationships and to depend on each other. And I think that was very rare. But I do think that it was about the relationship building and when we were, speaking of myself, when we were all kind of in our silos, just struggling, just trying to, I've gotta give my 110% because this is so important and I'm not doing a good job of taking care of myself. The visual that I would get is like, we're all kind of in the sea drowning, but we're also having to rescue kids while we're drowning. 

And what a recipe for disaster that is. And so building of those relationships, and I like how you said that too, of the thing that is common is so unique and it's people working in child protective services, child abuse detectives, is they're choosing that because they care about this issue. And the stronger that we care about that issue, the more passionate we are about it. 

And then I think the problem too with that is then we take ownership over that. So I think that I'm going off on a tangent here, but I think that those relationships are so important because you have people trying to figure out how to cope, and like you said, traumatized person. Traumatized person.  

Something needs to stop that pattern and do some of that repair work for individuals.  

TH: I think that even though the paper didn't necessarily address this, I see this as where CACs can be so critical because we're neither one, and so this gives us, in this coordinating role that we have, the ability to, while being a member of the MDT, taking one little tiny step back and maybe thinking, we spend a lot of time thinking about the health and functioning of our multidisciplinary team. 

And I think as we see people fall into the water, you know, it's our job to try to do what we can to provide supports that can help them continue on doing that work. And I just, I feel very fortunate that in my career, while I have seen all the things that this paper describes, I've also seen the team be such a resource to each other and really be a mechanism for lifting each other up and feeling like it was the safe place where team members could go and say the things that are really hard to say to a supervisor or the police chief or whatever. And so I just, I'm hopeful that by elevating this issue by your paper bringing it to light, it gives us the ability to address it, you know, to say we don't have to just settle for letting detectives emotionally struggle and not have resources and not be able to get what they need to be able to function at work at home. 

We can make that central to what we see as our role in helping the functioning of the MDT for the benefit of kids. Lemme just ask you, as we kind of close out this episode, what do you think the implications are? For policy makers, and I mean that, not just in terms of the big picture, you know, congress, state legislators, although feel free to talk about that, but even within departments like police departments and law enforcement agencies, what do you see as the thing that you're going, if you could read this study and take a couple of actions that would just make things a little better for those detectives, what would it be? 

LN: Yeah, that could be a whole other episode. So much of it I think is rooted in trauma informed care, and we have people who are extremely skilled at being able to provide that for others. But we are really awful at providing that for ourselves and for validating that for ourselves and for our teams, I think, and the things that happen within the MDT and within the CACs, it's amazing work that these professionals are doing, and this is work that they're doing for children and for others and for families. And that same prioritizing what helps a child feel safe and welcome when they walk into this building. You know, let's look at those same questions for our detectives. 

What helps them feel safe and comfortable coming into this building, talking to their chief, asking for help? You know, looking for the QR code that has the resources for the therapist list. What helps them feel safe? And I think that the language that we use is so important. Patting each other on the back for overworking for this kind of idea of you're so resilient, you're not impacted by your work. 

I remember being told sometimes at the CAC, like, gosh, we threw you out there. You walked through the fire and you survived. And that's like a beautiful thing for somebody to say, but that's also really awful of what people are doing. So the language that we use is really important from command staff, from leadership, from executive directors. 

Let's also pat people on the back when we see them taking care of themselves. When someone, you know, says, I'm going to leave early because I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna go to my kids' baseball game, like let's pat people on the back for that. Those are things that are very healing, that are very helpful when you're working through your own trauma. 

So I think that that stigma, the language that we use, the trauma informed care that CACs clearly can provide for victims, let's look at how do we approach that for our teams and for our detectives.   

TH: I just love that, and I think it's so important what you're talking about in terms of what are we affirming, you know, when we talk to people and compliment them. 

That's such a good point. So is there anything else I should have asked you and didn't, or anything else you wanted to make sure that we talked about today? 

LN: I think just the last thing I wanted to share too was just this is, obviously, this is such an important thing for people to talk about, and I love that there are more conversations happening about this. 

I'm old enough that there weren't conversations when I was starting out, and I just love the enthusiasm. I think the time is ripe for change to happen, and the single thing that everyone cares about is helping these kids. And so the best way we can help them is by helping ourselves and taking care of ourselves. 

I think the CACs are amazing that, a participant shared, the first call I make is to a CAC. I love that, and I just think that same energy that we provide to others can absolutely be provided for ourselves.   

TH: I love that. What a wonderful way to end. Well, thank you Lisa, so much for this, and as you further publish on these areas, please don't hesitate to come back anytime. 

LN: I will. Thank you so much for having me. It was so good to be a part of this.  

TH: Thanks for listening to One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And for more information about this episode or any of our other ones, please visit our podcast website at oneintenpodcast.org.