MSW students’ perceptions of co-response, police, and ethics

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine what factors impact MSW student interest in participating in co-response and who students would want on their interprofessional co-response team. It was determined that 3/4 of students had heard of co-response, over 60% agreed that they strongly supported the practice and nearly 94% said that they believed co-response aligned with social work values. The following positively impacted student desire to join co-response teams: students having positive perception of police, students having more knowledge of co-response, and student belief that co-response aligned with social work values. Race did not impact student desire to join a co-response team. These variables positively impacted student desire to work on a co-response team with police partners: students having a positive perception of police, students identifying as people of color, and student belief that co-response aligned with social work values. Knowledge of co-response did not impact student desire to work with police. These results show that while knowledge of co-response is relatively high, there is room for improvement in co-response awareness and recruitment. Social work education institutions should include co-response material in their curricula as well as fieldwork opportunities. While not all social workers want to work in emergency response, social workers in community agencies are likely to interface and collaborate with co-responders, and social workers in the policy arena may be in a position to advocate for thoughtful operationalization of co-response.