Keynote Speaker: Dave McLennan
Founder and President, Boots on the Ground
Topic: "Boots on the Ground"
Host: John Joseph Mastandrea
Rotary Toronto Meeting Friday, September 8th, 2023
Lunch at The National Club, 303 Bay Street, Toronto
and Virtual Meeting as well!
Views and Opinions Expressed Disclaimer: The views and opinions are those expressed by the Speaker and do not necessarily reflect the official views or opinions, policy or position of The Rotary Club of Toronto or its Members.
Biography
Dave is a retired police constable having served over 30 years with Peel Police. Dave is the founder and president of Boots On The Ground - Peer Support For First Responders. Boots On The Ground provides 24/7 peer support to all First Responders across the province including Police, Fire, EMS and Corrections and Nurses. (Military will be served by BOTG very soon.) Boots On The Ground serves both sworn and civilian members.
Dave will be speaking about the importance and effectiveness of peer support for First Responders. He will also be speaking about all of the BOTG programming including their 24/7 peer support help line and in person peer support, their PTSD Service dog program, Therapy dog program, Psychologist payment program and their peer to peer group debriefs.
Boots on the Ground Overview
Boots on The Ground is a charitable organization completely run and staffed by volunteer first responders.
We offer 24/7 over the phone peer support. Following a call to our help line, if further follow up is required, we are in a unique position to dispatch two volunteers throughout most of Ontario. We believe that this peer support model makes us stand out from other resources currently available. We also offer a variety of vetted referral services when we speak to people in need of assistance. Our services are offered to Police, Fire, EMS Corrections and Nurses and Military throughout Ontario. Our initial start-up committee was comprised of police officers. We now have volunteers from all emergency services involved in our program.
We have answered over 2400 calls for assistance on our per support help line since our November 26, 2018 launch.
We are an alternative to current wellness programs being offered through employers. We believe that these programs are under-utilized because of fears associated with social stigma and confidentiality issues. By keeping this completely separate from employee wellness programs our hope is that more people will utilize our available services. We offer a completely anonymous service when users call in so they do not have to worry about details of the conversation getting back to their workplace.
We currently have a group of 160 volunteers, including serving and retired First Responders, working on the program and answering the phone lines 24/7. The steering committee meets on a regular basis to continue to develop the framework of the program. We have a toll-free number included on our web page so that people can call for immediate assistance. This number is answered by volunteers on their own cell phones so that nobody has to sit in an office waiting for calls. Calls are forwarded to the volunteers’ phone in an anonymous fashion.
Boots On The Ground also has a psychologist funding program available to callers. When a caller is in need of psychological assistance and they do not have the financial means for this, BOTG will pay for their first five visits to see a clinician.
In September 2020, we launched our PTSD service dog program. Three lab puppies were paired with three First Responders with PTSD. They are now embarking on a two-year training journey together and the First Responders will have a fully trained PTSD service dog upon graduation. We recently added three more puppies to this program in November 2021.
Boots On The Ground has a therapy dog program as well. We provide visits to First Responder facilities with our trained therapy dogs. These services are available across southern Ontario right now with plans to expand to northern Ontario in the near future.
We also offer peer to peer group debriefs after critical incidents. We can send a team of trained volunteers out to any First Responder service to conduct a group debrief. These are not operational debriefs. These are effective for smaller services that do not have a peer support team or larger services who do not want to do an internal debrief.
All of our volunteers receive peer support and ASIST suicide prevention training. They are also offered bereavement training, Mental Health first Aid, compassion fatigue training, Military Veterans Wellness training and the FBI resiliency course. They are also provided with our own in-house training before being deployed to provide peer support.
We have developed the following for our program;
- Supervision by Dr. Vivien Lee.
- An extensive general procedure that includes code of conduct and procedures on answering calls, safety procedures and helpful tips when answering calls.
- A team member agreement that must be signed by all volunteers that includes confidentiality and self-assessment.
- A volunteer handbook that volunteers can take with them or access on their phone to assist them while on a call.
- A self-care program for our volunteers that includes weekly de brief conference calls, bi annual debriefs, after call debriefs, self-assessment tools, volunteer events, access to chaplains, therapy dog, meditation and yoga instruction. We also offer assistance from experienced peer support workers.
- An in-house training program has been developed that is provided to all volunteers. This covers our procedures, safety on calls, how to access our cloud system and how to log on to our cloud-based phone system.
- Our resource/referral team has developed an extensive list of vetted resources and referrals that we can refer clients to for professional assistance. This is included in our volunteer handbook so volunteers can offer clients choices for referral services.
- A volunteer recruitment procedure that involves volunteers requiring a police check, three references, an application form and an interview with our recruitment team before they are provided the training.
- A volunteer appreciation program so that our volunteers are recognized and appreciated. This will include yearly certificates of appreciation and events for team building.
- Our steering committee meets on a regular basis to develop and improve our program. We have been meeting to develop the program since October 2016.
- We have advocates on staff who assists clients with paperwork and the complicated WSIB process if needed.
- We have a cloud-based system in place for our volunteers to schedule shifts and access paperwork.
- We have a social media team that monitors our Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts. We utilize these as a means of advertising and awareness.
- We have had extensive media coverage including stories on CHCH T.V., CTV, CBC radio, 1010 Talk radio, Frontline Forward Radio and The Toronto Star.