In the aftermath of a sudden death, family members of the victim often have to speak with police, medical personnel and a raft of other emergency response officials. Volunteers with the Trauma Intervention Program want to make sure they also speak with a caring neighbor who is there to lend a hand.
TIP was founded in 1985 as a way to provide trauma-informed support in the wake of sudden tragedies such as car accidents, overdoses, suicides and other unexpected deaths. Trained volunteers are called to the scene by police, paramedics or other first responders to talk with loved ones of the victim and connect them with secondary services.
The organization now has 15 affiliates across the country, the newest of which will serve Lane County. Bridget Byfield is a former TIP volunteer and program director for TIP of Lane County. She joins us to talk about the benefits of providing “emotional first aid” in the first few hours after a tragedy.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. In the aftermath of a sudden death, family members of victims often have to speak with police, medical personnel or other emergency response officials. But volunteers with what are known as Trauma Intervention Programs want to make sure they also get a chance to speak with caring neighbors, people who are simply there to provide emotional or practical support. The Portland area based Trauma Intervention Program Northwest has been doing this work for the last 30 years. Now Lane County will get its own program. Bridget Byfield is a former TIP volunteer and now the program director for TIP of Lane County. She joins us now. Welcome to the show.
Bridget Byfield: Thank you.
Miller: How do you describe a Trauma Intervention Program?
Byfield: To me the Trauma Intervention Program is actually kind of putting a person’s compassion into action. When you really do care about someone, but you don’t know what the right thing to do is or how to help out a neighbor in need or just someone who’s gone through a crisis. When you work with TIP, you’ve been highly trained and you know what to do next. You know how to come in and be that caring person that you always wanted to be, but you know how to do it in a well-trained and appropriate manner.
Miller: When might a TIP volunteer be called onto a scene?
Byfield: The calls vary. One of the more common would be maybe an elderly couple where a spouse wakes up, the other one doesn’t. Their families may be a couple hours away. Or middle of the night and they’re not sure who to call; they call 911. The officers come out, and they tell them they’re sorry for their death. But you don’t have that person with the personal touch to just come and speak with them and talk with them until they can figure out who next of kin or who is the neighbor that they want to call and how to call them with some tragic sudden news like that. So that’s what a TIP volunteer is there for. But it is not limited to that. We’re there for suicides and overdoses, car accidents, sudden infant death syndrome, just about anything that the community might bring to light.
Miller: In those various situations, who is it that makes the decision that would lead TIP volunteers to be called in?
Byfield: That comes through 911, so it would be the officers on scene.
Miller: So as TIP comes online in Lane County, it’ll be up to those first responders to actually know enough about the new service to say, ‘Hey, this is a situation where TIP volunteers could really be useful.’
Byfield: Right. So they will be going through some training themselves to know what appropriate TIP calls would be and when they call. The word goes like wildfire when they find out that someone will come and stay with a person who’s been through a tragic event because oftentimes they have to leave without real closure, or seeing someone that’s really hurting and they need to get back to their job. So it’s real comforting for them, and less stress for them, to know they’ve done a warm handoff to a citizen that cares.
Miller: I would hope that first responders who this is their daily work – day in day out they’re dealing with people who have just gotten terrible news or have just been involved in a traumatic event. So it’s not like they’re strangers to these scenarios, these circumstances. But how, in general, might their approach and what they offer to families of victims, say, be different from what those families would get from a TIP volunteer?
Byfield: A TIP volunteer is not coming from any kind of government or authoritative position. So, right off, they’re a little less threatening. They also don’t have to do this job, come in and take care of details and find out things. So, as they approach a victim or someone who has witnessed a tragic event, they offer their services. If that person says, ‘Hey, I don’t want to talk to you right now.’ TIP is trained to say, ‘No problem, I’ll just wait outside a minute and if you change your mind, I’ll be there.’ or, ‘Sure, let me just step back. I get that.’
Whereas an officer or someone from ambulance or fire, they have to get some information. They have to really do their job. TIP can be there just to say, ‘Well, if you have any questions in a few minutes, I’ll be out in my car right out front.’ It’s unbelievable how many times people say, ‘Well wait. Who was that person that said they knew something? Where’d they go?’ Once they’ve calmed down a little, it’s not an authority person, but it’s a person who has some knowledge and training to help them in a crisis without the press to get information right away or to get a job done right away. So it takes away some of the immediate stress and pressure.
Miller: This new program in Lane County, it’s only happened because of buy-in and funding from several public safety agencies in the area, like police and fire departments in the biggest cities. How did you establish those partnerships?
Byfield: This was a unique and not necessarily easy but well worth collaboration of community partners. It was also spearheaded by a lot of citizens. It was something I had been trying to bring to this county 16 years ago. When I talked to the national office, not only did they say that some of the professional organizations here were asking for this program but citizens have been calling them, to the point of no other county in the United States had called the national office asking for how they can get this organization here in our community more than Lane County.
Miller: That’s a striking statement…
Byfield: Yeah.
Miller: It’s not like Lane County is the most populous county in… not even just in Oregon but, I mean, certainly not in the country.
Byfield: Right.
Miller: How do you explain that?
Byfield: Well, I do know that Lane County is very resource rich, but access struggles. There’s a lot of services out there, and we’d love to get those services to people, but it’s hard to know how to do it or who qualifies or how do you get through to there. TIP is a connector for that. I’ve worked with several safety net programs over the last eight to ten years through Trillium [Health] and many other organizations, and I’m retired from Child Welfare. I worked with so many community partners and would say, ‘You know, if we had TIP…’ this and this could have happened. So word does get out. And we are so excited that it’s finally a reality. Our community partners – police, fire and sheriff – have been just fabulous. I have hardly gotten any, if any, hard ‘no’s. It’s always been, ‘I’m not sure how we’re going to figure this out.’ because collaborating that many partners is quite tricky…
Miller: But were there turf issues? I mean, would anyone say, ‘I’m not sure that I want more people on the scene. It’s a complicated enough world already. We don’t need more people coming’?
Byfield: No. I think there were enough in the higher levels of police and fire that knew about Multnomah County and knew what a benefit it was that that was not an issue.
Miller: So it seems like maybe it was more the opposite – that your volunteers will take something difficult off the plates of people, who it’s not really their job to do that emotional support.
Byfield: Absolutely. And it’s not only for the victims and the people that have witnessed terrible scenes and such like that. I was here during the Thurston shootings when I was working for TIP in Multnomah County, and they sent me down here to work with some of the first responders, just to let them talk. Since I was trained in how to bring up those ideas and what was bothering them I also worked with first responders. I did also with 911 callers: they hear about a tragic thing, they send somebody out, and they never get closure and how that accumulated stress really starts to build up with them.
Miller: To be effective, your volunteers need to be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year because that’s the nature of these tragedies that happen at any time. Have enough people stepped forward to be volunteers?
Byfield: Well, we had to wait till we got all of the contracts clear and there are fees before we could do hard recruiting. But I have several, well I would say over 10, that said absolutely, and they were none of the 10 that… [inaudible] …that are friends of mine that I’m trying to get in at all. And we have just begun the recruiting. I am not … [inaudible] … step up and want to help each other. This is not a community that doesn’t care. This is definitely a community of compassion.
Miller: What will volunteer training look like? What do you need to get people to know before they can do this challenging work?
Byfield: The training is pretty extensive. It’s two weeks. Basically though, it’s like a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Those are evenings and then Saturday and Sunday. So you can still go to training while you’re holding a job. I actually was working and raising four kids when I was first a TIP volunteer, and it is possible.
Before you complete the training, there’s also a background check. You have to have a clean driving record, auto insurance, internet and email access, a valid driver’s license and a vehicle. And there will be the fingerprint and background like I mentioned before. The TIP volunteers are extremely well trained and they are screened, so that we know that we have a top-level staff coming out and meeting with our people in this community. However, I will say that the TIP training, the information you learn, changes your life. You become one of those people that really knows how to handle trauma and different issues in your own families, in your own daily living. It is so worth the training.
Miller: I haven’t forgotten a quote I saw last year [May 31, 2022] in the Portland Tribune from June Vining, the director of Trauma Intervention Program Northwest, based in Portland. She said, ‘I teach these citizen volunteers basically what to say – or more importantly, what not to say – when they walk into a complete stranger’s life, on probably the worst day of their life.’
I was struck by that, the second part there. What do you train people not to say?
Byfield: ‘I know how you feel’ because you don’t. ‘You’ll feel better in a little bit’ because you don’t know that. ‘Everything will be alright.’ It’s not alright. Those are probably the three that we most often want to say and aren’t really that effective and aren’t good to say. June Vining actually trained me, and one example I remember that really struck me was, a neighbor had a very tragic accident: husband, wife getting out of the car, they have a little baby in one of those car seats, they put the car seat, pulled that out of the car, put it behind the car, getting groceries out. The mom or dad, I don’t remember which, backed out and ran over the baby in the car seat. It was very tragic, totally an accident. A neighbor came over and said, ‘Oh I lost my dog last week. I know just how you feel.’ And you know they had the best intentions, but that was probably the worst thing for someone to hear.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for how doing this work has changed your own life? You gave us a small sense, saying that this affects the way you deal with friends or family and not just the worst traumas of people’s lives. But I’m curious how this has affected you personally?
Byfield: Personally, it’s almost hard for me to speak of the biggest thing that has affected me. I have seen the deepest love I ever could imagine seeing, for watching someone caring about someone else. Just… a deep… guttural doesn’t seem to be the best word… When I’ve seen someone mourn for the loss of someone, but then, one of the things we are trained to say is, ‘Tell me about this person you have lost.’ And when they tell these love stories, you would not believe it. They have lived a life with someone. And even if it’s just been a short time, that they have shared so much and they bring out just the best. I think that’s what affects me.
Miller: Bridget Byfield, thanks very much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
Byfield: Thank you. And please, we are looking for volunteers. So please keep watching out for TIP recruitment information.
Miller: That’s Bridget Byfield, program director for the new Trauma Intervention Program of Lane County. They will provide emotional support and practical and logistical support as well to people who have suffered various tragedies.
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