A story of how a local Captain at the Montgomery County Sheriff's jail made a difference in the lives of those less advantaged and motivated other agencies and charities to participate.
Here's the transcript.
Interview with Captain Kim Haug
Hugh: This is Hugh Ballou, and my guest for this session is Captain Kim Haug. I am at the Montgomery County Sheriff’s department. I met Kim the other day, and I was quite impressed with the work she has done outside of her regular job, demonstrating how leaders can make a difference. Let’s start with talking about what your job title is here.
Kim: I am captain, but my job title is the Chief Correctional Officer of the Montgomery County Jail.
Hugh: That’s your work-work. But we are going to talk about what you have done outside your work. Do you have a title or description for that program we are going to talk about?
Kim: The program that we have started is called Effort. It stands for Enabling Friends for Our Response Teams.
Hugh: Enabling Friends for Our Response Teams. Clever. What was the situation that came up that was the inspiration to start this?
Kim: We have a lady who works for the sheriff’s office. She has a son who is autistic. She requested that we do something for the special needs community. She didn’t give us a whole lot other than that. she just wanted us to do something with the special needs community, so that started some thoughts going and some programs. We started thinking of some things. We got together with a lot of people in the community and came up with the EFFORT program.
Hugh: Whoa. So she came and talked to you about it. What was the problem you were addressing?
Kim: She had had a couple bad experiences with her son. He is a teenager, and they live in a town. There had been a couple incidents with law enforcement. They were pretty scary for her. At one point, her son was not responding to a command, not because he didn’t understand it, but because he was afraid. He had something in his hand that was like a comfort item, and the command was to put it down. He refused to do it. The situation started to escalate pretty quickly. She was concerned that maybe in the future, ash e got older, that situation could have gone really bad. She just wanted us to do something for the special needs community, including individuals with intellectual disabilities because she saw the need.
Hugh: We read about things when they go bad with law enforcement. We want to balance it out with things that we do to prevent those situations. This is really important. what was next? How did you start this initiative?
Kim: First, I approached the sheriff with the idea of having a fun day at the sheriff’s department. I the nquickly realized that I was out of my element with the special needs community, that I needed some help and some guidance, as I didn’t want to do anything wrong. I knew that I would have one chance at this. You mess this up, and that could be really bad. I invited a lo of people from the special needs community, from schools, the Special Olympics, DARS and IDA and some other agencies in our area that work with special needs, along with law enforcement and first responders. We had a big brainstorming session. I told them some ideas, what I would like to do. They were really excited about it. We went forward with it, but always with the guidance of the people in the special needs community already to make sure we did everything that was going to be helpful and right, and that we wouldn’t do anything silly that would make the situation worse.
Hugh: Our audience are people who are leaders in various types of organizations like those that you reached out to. What is DARS and IDA?
Kim: DARS is the Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services. What they do is they work with a lot of individuals who have special needs on assisting them and getting them employment. IDA is Individuals with Disabilities Association, and they do a lot of really neat programs for individuals with disa