SURVIVOR NETWORK provides online support for members of the law enforcement community in grief.
Featuring some of the countries most accomplished chaplains, the SURVIVOR NETWORK harnesses the power of the Internet and hi-definition video to offer a spiritual retreat unique in its immediacy and impact on the viewer.
“The potential of the SURVIVOR NETWORK is way beyond church and religion. It has a sense of God breathing in it. The scriptures speak about the Spirit of God being like the wind, unseeable yet very real. That's one of the marks of God on this process. It pulls people towards the objects of God's affection, people who are suffering and grieving.”
Chaplain Steve Rekedal
A SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE OF CARE – 24/7
Accessible around the clock, THE SURVIVOR NETWORK is a tool for filling the silence that often surrounds grief, providing supplemental support when people need it the most – during those hours (or on those days) when no primary support is available or practical.
CONNECTING PEOPLE TO CONTENT
Harnessing the Internet’s unique ability to connect people to content, the program can reach those who might not otherwise seek help – a slain officer’s parents, grown children, or close friends and fellow officers within the department – individuals who may be more traumatized than they outwardly manifest, and whose grief may therefore go unresolved.
KINDRED SPIRITS
Additionally, the SURVIVOR NETWORK features the testimony of other survivors kindred
spirits who can speak to other survivors with an authority and conviction only furnished through common experience.
A CRITICAL TIME
A line-of-duty death is pervasive. It touches every member of a department - as well as spouses, family members and loved ones - with traumatic stress reactions. Individuals may go on to develop long-term impairment, such as Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disease. This is preventable with early crisis intervention. But unfortunately, whatever intervention that's available tends to be too little too late.
POLICE ARE DIFFERENT
The SURVIVOR NETWORK recognizes there are unique obstacles to grieving for a police officer. Noted police psychologist Dr. Daniel A. Goldfarb put it best in an article entitled: "Why Police Officers Are Different." In it, he states:
"Police need to be in constant emotional control. Law enforcement officers have a job that requires extreme restraint under highly emotional circumstances. They are told when they are extremely excited, they have to act calm. They are told when they are nervous, they have to be in charge. They are taught to be stoic when emotional. They are to interact with the world in a role. The emotional constraint of the role takes tremendous mental energy, much more energy than expressing true emotions."
The SURVIVOR NETWORK seeks to offer police officers meaningful support by first recognizing differences.
"While there is no one-stop solution to grief, the SURVIVOR NETWORK can urge the process along," observes program director Phillip LeConte. "It can be the motivation a survivor needs to seek further support at a time critical to their recovery."