What Co-Response Looks Like in Providence: Intervening to Address Trauma for Kids and Families

7.15.2022 - LISC Stories

Rachel Caruso

Rachel Caruso, a social worker with Family Service of Rhode Island (FSRI), is in her fourth year of riding along with officers of Providence Police Department. Before joining FSRI in July 2021 as a co-responder and manager of its Go Team, she worked for The Providence Center on a grant program of joint outreach with police to high-needs individuals that have frequent contact with police and emergency services. She has worked the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift, but currently works a flex schedule around a 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. workday.

What does your day look like as Go Team manager?

Unless I'm doing admin stuff, I'm out on the road. I like to be out on the road. I think one of the best ways for us to get cases and referrals is to be out there, because sometimes the officers don't realize how helpful we can be. So a typical day is I get to the station, I speak with the OIC, the Officer In Charge. We discuss who I'm going to be riding with. And then I spend the rest of my day in the passenger seat of a patrol car.

Can you describe the types of calls or incidents where you’re called into action?

Our direct role is to try and mitigate trauma. So we go to scenes and we assist in cases where people are affected by trauma because they are a witness or victim of crime, anywhere from domestic violence cases to child abuse cases. I've assisted with overdoses, because I've been able to speak with the family who are watching their loved one overdose. Sex trafficking cases. I have been present when Narcotics and Intelligence have done raids or executed warrants and there have been children present. So anywhere where trauma is happening, that's where we are.

Can you give an example of how you’ll help during an arrest or raid?

In one situation, there had been a warrant, I think it was one of the specialized units had presented a warrant to somebody for distributing narcotics. Both parents were arrested, the mother and the father, and there was this little boy, he was six. Once the police became aware that there was a child involved, I was called to the scene. The officer that I was riding with brought me to that scene, where I kind of checked in with the child, who was a little standoffish. I think that child was very aware of what was going on. There was a history of arrest in that household. So I was present to talk to him. I was in charge of getting him into a police car. We all went back to the station and I contacted DCYF [the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families]. DCYF was already involved with this family. So I spoke with the caseworker and I hung out with the kid in the Narcotics office, in the police station, for about the hour that it took for DCYF to come and take custody of the child. He was a spunky little kid. He was pretty resilient.

Police can make referrals for services. Is it necessary for you to be on calls?

I think it's really important for us to be directly on scene, because our overall goal is to mitigate as much trauma as we can. The easiest way we can do that is to build a rapport quickly and effectively. I say to every person I come in contact with, we take things one step at a time. If we can be there for that first step, which is speaking with the police, I think it's very important. We can render aid very quickly. Then we walk them through the steps after that.

So part of this job is following up with people directly?

I got to say, the follow-up work is probably one of my favorite parts about this program. We follow a case through until basically its completion, regardless of what that is. I have sat in on detective interviews with victims of domestic violence. I have gone to sexual abuse interviews through the Aubin Center, which does forensic interviewing on child molestation cases. We follow our victims all the way through. They have a familiar support every step of the way, whether that step is a doctor's appointment, a follow-up interview by the police department, a court hearing, going to file a restraining order.

Can you give an illustration of those steps in one case?

This was a happy ending story. I was called right at the end of the shift. It was about 11 o'clock at night. The officer was going back to the station and saw these two little girls, a three-year-old and a five-year-old, just wandering around the South Side of Providence in the middle of the night with no shoes on. So the officer called me, we went over there, and it was very clear that these little girls were not taken care of. Their clothes were very tarnished. The little one was remarkably malnourished; we found out later on that she actually had a feeding tube. They couldn't tell me their names or where they lived.

The sergeant on scene contacted a Providence rescue. I rode in the rescue with the two girls to Hasbro Children's Hospital. The little one, I held her the whole time. She wouldn't let me put her down. I was there for about three and a half hours while the doctors did tests. As soon as the guys in that [police] district began discussing what was going on, one of the officers who was not on scene said he thought he knew who these two little girls were, went to the home, and it was them. Mom was passed out on the couch. She didn't even know that they were gone. So police got in contact with the grandmother. I stayed at the hospital until DCYF arrived with grandmother, and grandmother currently has custody of those two little girls.

After that night, I coordinated with DCYF to help grandmother set up daycare for these two little girls, because obviously she wasn't prepared to have a three-year-old and a five-year-old permanently in her home. She told me she had already raised, I believe, eight children. We ended up finding a daycare directly across the street from where they live. And so now those two little girls are living with their grandmother and they're both very happy and healthy.

Do you ever get called to schools where a child is in some type of crisis?

Yes, when the school contacts the police department, it's the police department that contacts us about which cases or what situations we could be helpful at. For instance a few months back, there was a little boy, seven or eight. He was having behavioral issues. He had barricaded himself underneath the teacher's desk and had refused to come out for two hours. So they called us in and the officer that I was with and myself actually kind of coaxed him out.

I recently went to a school on a statutory rape case. The victim is currently 15, but she was raped when she was 14 and she disclosed the information to her teacher. The original report was made at the school, so I responded to the school and helped her and the officers kind of get that original information out. I'm still involved with that family. I believe her abuser is arrested.

A lot of cities including Providence are exploring ways to disinvolve police from behavioral health calls. Do you think you could respond to some calls without police?

I can see how another team without police would be effective on certain calls. I'm interested to see how that team is going to roll out and look. But I think it's very different from the Go Team, and I think you need both. Our entire program is built on this partnership with police and we thrive in this partnership. What’s very unique and important about our partnership is that we work hand in hand together to complete these goals. And I think one of the reasons we are able to get to people and provide direct service safely and effectively is with police present.

Kirsten Doldoorian

Kirsten Doldoorian has been a Providence police officer since 2014. She has worked posts on the South Side and in the Olneyville area, and is now assigned to an area of Cranston Street in the city’s West End. She has worked the overnight shift and now is on second shift. Doldoorian is also involved in officer field training.

As an officer, when would you want to get the Go Team involved?

There's a wide range of calls where having the Family Service advocates is useful. It could be a juvenile matter, some type of family matter, a death notification, domestic violence situation. There’s a vast range.

Does having that civilian ride with you change the experience of policing?

It's a little bit of an adjustment to have somebody, especially a civilian, riding along with you at times, definitely during more stressful calls or more dangerous situations, just because obviously we feel responsible for their safety as well. We're not going to allow them to go into an environment that's not safe or set up for them to do their job appropriately.

I've taken Rachel [Caruso] out numerous times throughout the course of the past year, and she's just great to have. Because if I need something in that moment, Rachel's there. She can offer the services that person or that family needs, and it just kind of wraps up the whole call for service in its entirety. It gives me another tool in my belt and more options. And it can help give people more closure to what they're going through, instead of me just handing someone a business card and saying, “here, you need to call this person.” I know that she's going to do a follow-up the next day or the next week, really reach out and try to contact them to get them the help that they need.

Can you give an example of how you might collaborate on a case?

Recently Rachel helped me with a female who was having issues with her ex-boyfriend. He was stalking her and cyber stalking her. She was repeatedly being harassed by this individual via Facebook, via Instagram. He was reaching out to her coworkers and it was affecting her work life as well. He was showing up unwanted different times, just harassing her family and her friends. So that female had reached out, called police. I spoke with her, she wanted to document the incident that he had been calling her in excess of a hundred times during the day. She was in total breakdown crisis mode and tears, just didn't know where to start, what to do, who to call.

Having Rachel that day was a huge help. She was able to take the time to explain to her the process of getting a no-contact order, guide her through the domestic violence process, because it can be very tedious and confusing for a lot of people. She also works with our special victims unit, so she can coordinate with some of those detectives up there and discuss the matter at hand a little more in depth rather than them just reading my base report. And ultimately over the course of, I believe the month, detectives in coordination with Family Service were able to issue an arrest warrant for him. He's been brought in on those charges and there's a permanent no-contact order currently between them.

The Go Team focuses on helping kids caught in traumatic situations. Have you seen scenarios like that as an officer, where you thought, “What do I do with this child?”?

Yes. It happens very frequently. I believe it was in March 2018, there was a murder-suicide. This was on the very serious end of the spectrum, obviously. I believe there were three children involved, and came home. They were at grandma's house and mom and dad had been involved in that.

That was probably one of the more difficult things to see, and Family Service was called right away. Rachel wasn't riding with me for that incident, but we did have a Family Service team member that responded to work with the kids and DCYF in coordination with the additional family members.

At the other end of the spectrum it’s mom's having an issue with her kid not going to school and he's being delinquent and getting arrested or in trouble. We can try to explain to mom and guide her through the wayward child process or offer her some other services that she might need. A lot of the families we deal with have multiple things going on. Maybe mom's out of work, doesn't have enough funding to take care of the kids appropriately, so now the kid’s acting out and falling through the cracks at school. Sometimes even offering a simple babysitting service for a child might help take some pressure off.

Do you feel the partnership affects the public's perception of you as a police officer?

I think it definitely changes the public's perspective. They don't see me as just there to arrest people and take people to jail. We're human beings too, it's just a uniform we wear. The vast majority of us are there to go and help people every single day. A lot of the time that gets overlooked and we're just seen as “the police” in general. We have feelings, we have hearts, we have families. So for us, being able to go out and help people, we like doing that. That’s why I do the job.