County leadership talks mental health support for first responders
The Albany County Commission approved a $185,000 grant application aiming to provide mental healthcare for sheriff’s office employees. A similar proposal for firefighters is in the works.
The Albany County Sheriff’s Office is applying for a $185,000 grant from the Wyoming Department of Health to provide mental health care access for its employees.
The funding, if awarded, would come from the state’s federal American Rescue Plan allocation, some of which was set aside for first responder mental health.
A similar proposal for services that would cover the Laramie Fire Department is under development.
Albany County Sheriff Aaron Appelhans addressed the Albany County Commission during its meeting last week.
“We wanted to institute a mental health program in our own agency because our deputies also come across a lot of traumatic instances,” Appelhans said.
The sheriff’s office plans to have mandatory debriefs after attending certain types of calls. They also plan to start a peer-support group to help on a more individual basis.
Commissioners unanimously approved the sheriff’s grant application.
They also discussed, but have not yet voted on, a similar proposal for the Laramie Fire Department.
“There’s been a lot of focus on this recently, especially going through the pandemic years,” said Luke Hawkins, chair of the Albany County Fire District No. 1 board. “There's been a lot of emotional trauma and a lot of things that really come out from that.”
Albany County Grants Manager Bailey Quick estimated it could cost almost $300,000 to provide six counseling sessions a year for three years to each of the fire department’s 104 volunteer firefighters.
But a full 18 sessions for every single firefighter and responder might not be necessary, Hawkins said, if the department can build up more peer support and develop more in-house specialty. If firefighters and other first responders can get help outside of therapy, it would save the county money.
So Hawkins pitched the idea of contracting with the Colorado-based non-profit organization Building Warriors, which works with non-profit Foundation 1023. Together, the organizations specialize in establishing peer support networks for first responders, and training in-house chaplains to provide more advanced support
“After a major event, they can bring those crews together, they can talk about it and start working through the emotional processes of how to heal from it, start trying to normalize the effects that we all have from these calls that we go to,” Hawkins said. “It's a really good first step. What it does is initiates the cost-savings because we are able to do that at a group level. They are also able to train the trainers.”
Building Warriors provides training for volunteers that sign up for peer support. The chaplains that already volunteer for the district would have training available to them through the organization.
But the group is not licensed to work in Wyoming.
Hawkins asked for the ability to move forward with creating a contract with Building Warriors. With a contract in hand, the organization would move toward obtaining Wyoming licensing.
“A physical injury you can see, it's something you can document, you can run data, you can say the person is injured and can't pick this up and therefore they can’t perform their duties,” Hawkins said. “A mental health injury is a real injury but it's a very subjective injury.”
The commissioners were supportive of the proposal.
“We have the challenge in the fire district and in the volunteer departments in the north end of the county — we have people that want to serve their community and they're not specifically trained to deal with these kinds of things, and maybe that support network isn't there,” Commissioner Heber Richardson said. “This is something near and dear to me, I am happy to support this today. So I’m ready to get on with it.”
But the commissioners ultimately asked Hawkins to return with a more concrete proposal.
“At this point, I love the idea,” Commission Chair Pete Gosar said. “I think it is useful and I think it’s a really needed service. Just giving us the plan would allow me to understand what the project is — not that you haven’t been clear. I just want to understand exactly what it is when we go to approve the budget request.”