Family Support:
An important dimension of CISM for emergency workers
According to Karen Ott, psychologist with NSW Corrections, family support is receiving growing attention across a wide range of organisations.
"It's not sufficient to support only the person in uniform. It's necessary to support the entire environment in which the uniformed person operates, including the person's family."
(Mitchell & Everly, 1995).
- In the Emergency Services, common stressors reported by family members include:
- Rotating shiftwork. These are a common feature of emergency services, hospitals and corrections. Changing work schedules can disrupt the routines required for healthy marriage and family development.
- Child care. Some spouses find that the major portion of child care and family decision-making is left to them because the officer's shift work, or being called away without warning.
- Over-protection. Spouses have noted problems with excessive vigilance and over-protection.
- False attributions. In one study of 479 Police spouses, a commonly cited source of stress was `either excessive or too little discussion about the job'. While excessive discussion of an incident could be distressing for family members, avoiding the issue can also produce difficulties. A critical incident can have profound effects on the family through vicarious (or secondary) trauma. The family members concern about the victim, and witnessing their reactions, can also be very distressing
A further problem for family members is having to "guess" what the problems might be, when there's a prevailing attitude that family needs to be `protected' from the work environment at all costs. Some officers avoid speaking about work with their families. Relationship counsellors have identified the following false attributions:
The Officer has a bad day at work. On arriving home, the family senses something is wrong. In reply to questions, the Officer is adamant that "nothing is wrong". The family member assumes the problem is with the family.
The Officer has been involved in a critical incident. On arriving home, the family senses something is wrong (sometimes they have seen media reports as well). In reply to the family's questions, the Officer replies "There was an incident at work, but I'm fine. Don't worry about it". When family members have little knowledge about the work environment, except that is potentially dangerous, they may falsely exaggerate the danger of the situation through imagination, and can become over-anxious for the Officer's safety.
Another false attribution occurs when family members think the Officer is `callous or uncaring' about family problems or injuries.
The effect of these false attributions is to increase stress for the family.
Instead of `protecting' the family from possible harmful consequences of the work environment, closed communication styles cause their own problems.
In response to the indicated need for family support, many OH&S programs, including CISM teams, have developed support initiatives which reach out to significant others of the emergency personnel. The following are suggestions for such programs:
- Include information about family stress in stress management and pre- incident training.
- Educate family members about critical incident stress management in stress prevention education programs.
- Educate the organisation about family stress. This can be done by exploring the issues of job stress on family and the role the peer supporters, counsellors and senior staff can play in supporting families.
- Educate families about the work environment. Workplace orientation tours can be useful. In some Correctional Centres tours have been conducted after- hours when inmates are in their cells.
Family support ideas are also available on Internet. In many organisations, family members can now access information about stress management and other aspects of the job. They can e-mail questions, and even access counselling services. Some organisations have family support web-sites to give family members more information. The following are examples:
www.firepolicecounseling.com
www.policewives.acauth.com
www.icisf.org/classes/family.html
www.nationalcops.org