The negative impacts of childhood trauma have been well established and can affect an individual over the course of his or her entire life. Problems regarding healthy social/emotional development, increase in risk-taking behaviors, increase in psychiatric conditions, and other long-term health outcomes have all been associated with childhood trauma.
Over half of all individuals incarcerated in state and federal prisons are parents of a minor, and many of those children are under the age of 5. Children who have experienced the trauma of being exposed to the arrest of a family member have been shown to be significantly more likely to have been victims of, or witness to, a wide range of other crimes within their homes. These children also are more likely to develop serious emotional and behavioral problems. Since the coping skills of younger children are less developed than older children, they are at a much greater risk for these negative outcomes. Unfortunately, even with all of these consequences of exposure to trauma, many towns and cities do not have policies or procedures in place to provide services to this particularly vulnerable population of children.
Some communities have made strides towards addressing this issue with some success by educating police forces on child development, dispatching licensed mental health professionals to emergency calls involving children, and providing support and therapeutic services to families where a minors parent has been arrested.
In New Haven, CT, the Child Development-Community Policing Program (CD-CP) has trained police in child development and the effects that trauma can have on a child. This program also provides on-call clinicians to ride along with police when a violent crime occurs in the community. Those clinicians meet with the family to help stabilize the child and educate the family about trauma and their access to support services. Studies of the CD-CP have shown that this early intervention is significantly effective at reducing the negative effects of trauma on children. This program has shown to be so successful that it now serves as a national model for police-mental health partnerships and is being replicated in several cities across the U.S.
Given the implications of childhood exposure to trauma, including the financial burden on society (estimated at over $103 billion annually) and the negative impact on individual health, it is essential that early intervention programs partnering law enforcement with mental health professionals, such as the CD-CP, be implemented in order to prevent or mitigate these adverse outcomes.
Written by Buddy Toth, Visiting Student in Research.