John Brown Universityโs Center for Healthy Relationships will hold their first BRAVE Workshop on Tuesday, which is designed to help first responders build stronger personal relationships.
BRAVE stands for โrelationships that are bonded, resilient, attuned, vulnerable, and empathetic.โ The program was created to give first responders the knowledge and tools to build stronger relationships at home, in hopes of helping with their mental and emotional well-being.
โI had this vision of creating a holistic wellness program for my department and my officers,โ said Scott Miller, Chief of Police for Siloam Springs. โWe centered around these basic principles of mind, body and spirit, and tackling each one of those things.โ Chief Miller connected with the Center for Healthy Relationships (CHR) at John Brown University to create the program. According to Dr. Rosemary Flaaten, Executive Director at CHR, the team has been interviewing members of Siloam Springsโs Fire and Police Departments about the challenges they face to make a program tailored toward the specific needs of first responders.
โWhat has been invaluable is to sit down with first responders, and to hear their stories,โ said Dr. Flaaten, โTo sit face to face with somebody and they tell you the challenges that their workplace, and their situation, has had on their significant relationships at home. Personally, It has given me a whole new perspective.โ The pilot workshop has been funded by a $10,000 grant from the Arvest Foundation. โThe average person may go through about 20 traumatic events in their lifetime. The average first responder is going to see well over a thousand in a 20-year career,โ said Chief Miller, โThose have long lasting impacts, and those impacts donโt just stop with that first responder. They go home with them.โ
Both Dr. Flaaten and Chief Miller stated that if first responders using the knowledge provided in the curriculum, they believe those first responders will be able to better serve their communities. They also stated that in the long term, they hope the program will spread across the state of Arkansas, and eventually across the U.S.
โThis is all first responders, right? All across the state, all across the nation. Everybody has been seeking this kind of information and training and knowledge to have better, healthier first responders,โ said Chief Miller, โAnd so the goal is to help as many first responders as we can possibly touch, and help their families with this program.โ
