Just Released: Serving Safely Webinars on Enhancing Policing for Persons with Mental Illnesses and Developmental Disabilities
The Serving Safely webinar series is now available on the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s (BJA) YouTube page. Each webinar features speakers from the Serving Safely: The National Initiative to Enhance Policing for Persons with Mental Illnesses and Developmental Disabilities team, which is a collaborative effort between BJA, the Vera Institute of Justice, and partners in the fields of policing, mental illness, intellectual and developmental disabilities, crisis intervention, peer advocacy, emergency medicine, technology development, and prosecution.
Here’s a brief description of each webinar:
This webinar provides participants with a synopsis of the Serving Safely initiative.
This webinar provides an overview of intellectual and developmental disabilities, prosecutors’ legal obligations when interacting with the disability community, and concrete strategies to effectively serve this population using real-life case scenarios.
“Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: 10 Facts Law Enforcement Officers Need to Know”
This webinar provides 10 practical tips law enforcement officers can use to effectively serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Additionally, the webinar presenters share information on how officers can seek further training through the "Pathways to Justice" law enforcement module.
This webinar presents models of mental health crisis response, including crisis intervention teams, mobile crisis, co-responder, and stand-alone mental health response training. It also discusses how research addresses the effectiveness of models for responding to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and directions for future research.
“The Case for Police-Mental Health Collaboration: What Every Law Enforcement Executive Should Know”
This webinar discusses the interactions between people living with mental illnesses and intellectual and developmental disabilities and police. Speakers share real-world experiences in developing Police-Mental Health Collaboration programs, which are comprehensive approaches to these situations and consist of partnerships, policy and practice redesign, training, data collection, and program maintenance.