Episode 45 : David Kennington - Nashville Police Department Wellness Manager

Welcome to the Guns and Yoga Podcast.  My name is Wendy Hummell. 

Before we get into today’s episode, I’d like to share a few things with all of you:

• I will be presenting a couple of free webinars on Justice Clearinghouse. For those of you that don't know, Justice Clearinghouse is a peer-to-peer educational platform geared towards CJ professionals. 
• On December 8th, I will be presenting “Building a Wellness Program from the Ground Up”.  It is free to watch live, and if you are Justice Clearinghouse member you can access the replay anytime. Please see the link below.
• The December webinar will be an overview of what it takes to implement an organizational wellness program from the ground up. If this is something you are interested to learn more about, I will be releasing a longer course on the Justice Clearinghouse platform early next year, so stay tuned.
• Also, I recently presented a webinar on Justice Clearinghouse called “Side Hustles and Second Careers: Reimagining your Professional Passion After Retirement”, and as a part of the Second Mountain Master class series,  which focuses on retirement I will be breaking down the sections of this webinar in future microcasts and will incorporate additional content, so stay tuned.
• We recently did a giveaway for a guns and yoga hat.  Thank you to all that entered and joined the email list, and congratulations to the winner - Katherine Boyle.         . 

Now on to today’s episode where I share a conversation with David Kennington, the Manager for the Professional Wellness Section at the Nashville Metro Police Department.  David is a licensed professional counselor and manages civilian counselors and the sworn arm of the wellness unit.

Not only is David a trailblazer in the first responder wellness space, but he has come to be a trusted mentor and friend.  We met a few years back when I was early into my role as the Health and Wellness Manager at my agency.  Through a program called CRITAC, which we discuss in the episode, our agency was paired with David’s along with another subject matter expert, Sherri Martin, National FOP Wellness Coordinator, who was a previous guest on the show.

David and I continue to stay connected and he has been an integral part of our wellness programs success.  Because of his guidance, an unexpected benefit of our relationship through the CRITAC program, which included site visits, was our own unit’s expansion.  We were able to go from one full time person, me, to now three full time employees in our unit, one of which is an in-house therapist.  This not only speaks to the legitimacy of the program, but to our agency’s leadership and buy in, a crucial element for any agency wellness program I also discuss in my upcoming webinar, Building a Wellness Program from the Ground Up.

Some of the highlights from our conversation are:

• The growth of his agency’s wellness program, which began with the behavioral component, or in house therapists to the recent addition of the sworn section, wellness checks, training, peer support, family support, succession planning, and the importance of having a menu of services