What we can learn from 30 years of embedding social workers with Boston police

So our social workers are embedded, right, in the stations, and so they do sit alongside officers who every day, you know, are, are worried about different young people.

And so this really is about, uh, an officer saying to, uh, one of our social workers, "Hey, there's this young man.

Hey, there's this young woman.

Really worried about them.

Could you please reach out?"

Can you give us an example of an actual kid, um, and what the mental health supports and the wraparound services you provided that kid were?

You know, there is one young person that I am thinking about who so many years ago, um, experienced the, the devastating loss of, of a brother-

Hmm

... to community violence.

Uh, and he himself was also, uh, the survivor of a, a shooting as well.

And when I think about this young man, it's that sense of profound just gratefulness that this young man, who has gone through so much, trusted us, right? And trusted our social worker to do the work that it took to unpack all of these layers of grief, to really think about some of the choices he was making at the time.

Uh, this was about, uh, four or five years ago, and we still to this day are working with this young man who is doing incredibly well, has been able to graduate.

He's doing everything he can right now to really get, um, get to where he wants to be.