CHARLESTON, W.Va — At the Kanawha County School Board meeting last week, Lt. Chad Napier was honored before the meeting for his work with Handle With Care.
The Handle With Care program requires officers to inform schools when a child has experienced a traumatic event at home, such as drug use or a domestic dispute.
“It’s really getting everybody outside of silos. Instead of me just working as a police officer, working with the school system and working with mental health; us all working together to help make children successful.”
The program was unveiled on March 31 at the West Virginia State Police Academy. Napier said even small things can be reported to schools.
“Could just be a verbal argument between the parents; could expose a child to trauma,” he explained. “Whenever officers determine that they’ve responded to a call and a child has experienced trauma, they note it on a (form), before the child goes to school the next day they make a notification.”
Napier thought the program should be modeled nationwide, particularly after President Barack Obama commended the initiative in his visit to Charleston’s West Side last month.
“I think it’s very important, not only to our area, but like the president said, I think it’s a model program for across the United States,” said Napier. “It seems like as we make these notices to the school, the response you get is ‘why weren’t we doing this before?’
Napier said that notifying the school is only one part of the process that Handle With Care aims to help children.
“You also have the school who’s trained on interventions to help deal with the trauma, then you have the mental health component,” he said. “Those children that need more than just school interventions. They need the professional counseling also. All three are critical to the program itself.”