We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast, with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode, episode 103. And this one, Bob, is on how to promote resilience in the therapy process. Another fantastic topic that you've given us. Yeah, because you know, surely, surely, that's one of the end goals in any relational dialogue of any client-purpose process that happens. In TA terms, it might be, you know, developing robust adults, some people might want to talk about it, but I like the word resilience. And, you know, usually people come in to therapy with degrees of either robustness in their adult or eager state, strength in their adult or eager state, or even fragility in their adult or eager state. But usually, people want to move to a more healthy place where they feel stronger inside themselves. And we could use the term resilience here. It's a very good term. And it's often something which is part of any contracting that TA therapists might make. And I especially, I expect you've made many contracts where resilience is part of the process, would you say? Yeah, yeah. Where people come wanting to be more resilient or, yeah, handle life's lessons in a better way, maybe. I don't know. So what do you think is resilience? Would you describe resilience? Oh, just to be able to stay in the here and now, not to get lost in their vulnerable past or to move to a place where they're stuck in their parent-eager state, bearing down on themselves and telling themselves off or having that toxic script or the child which is overthinking or anxious or depressed or more. But be able to be in the here and now and a degree of feeling strong in themselves from a healthy position. Yeah. Because some people think it's kind of like Ben's backability or just keeping going. Yeah. Something more than that. Well, I don't know. It's kind of like, you know, resilience is just keeping going and, you know, if you fall down, getting up and, you know, still going and everything. But one of the things I say to clients sometimes is that resilience is understanding that maybe we're on the wrong path and we need to change paths. It's not always keeping going down the same route. Sometimes we need to understand that that's not the way that we should be going and we need to pivot and look at something else. That can also be seen as resilience. I couldn't agree more with you on this. And I think one of the pivotal things about resilience or to help a person develop a resilience spirit, if you like, is that they have a friend on the way. Yeah. In other words, you know, and all my assessments that I do with clients or new clients that come in for assessments and I pass them on nowadays. One of the things I'm always asking is in real life, how much support they got in terms of friends and people who would look out for them. I'm very interested in their support networks because the more alone they are, the more lacking resources they are, all they're left with usually then is their toxic script, the narratives in their head, which often isn't very useful. And when they are stuck in that lonely position, they've got no one to turn to. No, not only lack of external friends, but lack of an internal friend, psychologically I'll speak. So I think one of the really big steps to help somebody who wants to move towards psychological resilience is, besides checking out all those support networks I'm talking about, is to help them get on board a psychological friend. And of course, that psychological friend usually, well, first step really, needs to be themselves. They need to start getting to a place of compassion and love and caring and accounting for themselves. Now, that's, of course, a very big step. It's not straightforward about all that, but it will certainly help on the road to resilience. Yeah. I think what you've said there is a massive thing for an awful lot of people, is to be compassionate with themselves and to show self-love and all those sorts of things, because it's seen as being selfish sometimes. If we prioritise ourselves or that sort of thing, it's seen as quite negative in itself. It may well do, and I think you're right, Jackie, and it also, if they follow that road, if they stay alone psychologically, if they stay in a spiritual wilderness, if they haven't got psychological friends to help themselves pick themselves up, if they haven't got part of themselves, which will take account of their vulnerable self, they are going to find it very difficult to develop healthy resilience. Yeah. Now, you guys, I completely agree with you what you're saying. Many people might see resilience as, well, go along and go along, we'll fall up, we'll get up again, or go along, we'll fall up, we'll get up again, we'll go along, we'll get again, and eventually we'll get there in the end. But of course, what happens, they get there in the end, and then they find another mountain to climb up, and they go to the top of that, they go to another mountain, and eventually they'll end up completely unhealthy, lacking oxygen, lacking oxygen, and they then start the repetitive cycle again. And that's what I'm talking about. That's just like a survival process, where there's no quality of life. There's no any happiness, it's usually like a hamster on a, you know, a wheel. There's no fulfilling of your spirit and any form or shape. It's interesting, because I run a membership, a monthly membership that's like based on therapeutic principles, and one of the things that we've been discussing this week, which kind of touches into this, is that unless they've found it really difficult and challenging, and pushed themselves to the actual limits to achieve something, they don't see it as a success. They've kind of got all these benchmarks and ideas that, you know, they have to do X, Y and Z in order for it to be a success. And it's like, well, no, it doesn't need to be hard work. Oh, here's a perfect example. You know, on the social media platforms often frequently, someone sent me up and said, look, a challenge for you to every day for this month to walk 10,000 steps, which is four miles. So I said, oh, okay. And yes, the person said on the other end, who is a friend of mine. Yeah, I've got many, many, many, many other people doing the same thing.  So I said, okay, I'll take that up. So I started that process. And interestingly, as I start going around every day, and I live near the mercy, and I walk around this four mile sort of process at 6.30 in the morning, I started that process, like you were just saying in a way, well, I've got to get around that if I go to that place, and I go to the next, and I get to the next, and I get to the next. And there was this sort of dialogue going in my head, which was about, well, I've just got to achieve it. But actually, as I started to change this way of thinking, because I thought it was a pretty drudges 6.30 in the morning, in this survival route I'm talking about. And I started to look around at the trees and hear the birds and look at the river, and gave myself some compassion when I felt tired to stop if I wanted to, and to think about some nice things and things that I'm grateful in life about. Not only did I enjoy the route much happier, or in a much more fulfilled way, I felt enriched when I finished. So it's how we are on the journey, not if we're focused on just getting to the end, then we might as well just not do in the first place. You know, I think they were talking about weight loss and exercise and doing all these things, and that maybe if they missed one day out of the seven, that they'd throw the towel in, and what a waste of time, and I'm rubbish and all this sort of stuff. Instead of looking at it, that actually six days out of seven, you achieved your goal, and it was brilliant. They'll always focus on the one bit where maybe they didn't feel successful. That's right. And the process used to be as around your parent eager state, which isn't helping you. Because they've got histories, and often cultural histories, when the parent eager state is about being strong, carrying or whatever, x, x, x, x. Not a parent eager state system. Oh, it's okay if you stop. We can have a day off, we have a treat day off, we want to say to ourselves. And we need a parent which is different, I think, to support the vulnerable self. And as we go down that road, so we have a more positive parent helping the vulnerable self to have purpose and enjoy life in a different way, then our adults and our being in the here and now will become more resilient to things that might happen, which are more difficult in the past. So, for example, you know, as you know this yourself as a wonderful permanent, I think it's in TA today, that book at the end. With the whole poem about we're going down a road and we fall in a hole, you know, pit of darkness of life, and we can either stay or stay in that, but we get up again, and we eventually go down a process through compassion using a visceral, where we go down another road instead of going down that road. I love that poem, yeah, absolutely. We only do that by positive support and compassion. Yeah. Otherwise, we'll keep repeating the same process and fall down the hole and get stuck in it. Yeah. Now, one aspect of resilience, I think you talked about earlier, is the ability to get out of the hole quicker. Yes. But you can only get out of the hole quicker if you have a compassionate dialogue with yourself. Because if you don't have one, you won't see the hole in the first place. Yeah. Or you'll spend that long beating yourself up that you've fallen in it again, that you'll stay in it for a while. That's a bit like that. A bit like that hamster cycle. Yeah. I think therapists always have to take on the parents, you know, enable to allow a younger self to develop a resilience with support rather than adversity. Yeah. Yeah. So when you say that, you mean for the therapies to take on the client's parents? Yes. An internal dialogue and all that sort of stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I must do that at least once in every session, I would imagine. Yeah. And you'll do that in many ways. You'll do that. You could do that by modelling a different type of parent. You can do that by challenging the pair, but that's another story. You need to need to do that in a different way, but you'll do that in many different ways. But usually you'll do it, I think, by modelling and supporting the vulnerable child. Yeah. Perhaps providing a different dialogue for the person to hear. Because remember, all their life, they've heard a toxic dialogue. A dialogue which is often built in, you could do better. You know, good boys don't cry or you have to be strong to survive around here, rather than positive parental dialogue. Yeah. Yeah. So you're building up a different parental voice, which perhaps they've not had before. And I think that's one of the clues about resilience is that the person has a different type of parental dialogue in their head, which is supportive, protective to allow that resilience to grow. Because resilience will only grow in the light, not the dark. Yeah. That's lovely. Only grow where the sunshine, not darkness. Yeah. So the therapist has to provide the fertile ground, if you like, for lightness to appear, not stay in the shadows. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Because being resilient doesn't mean that we don't get it wrong sometimes or we don't make mistakes and all those sorts of things. It's about how we deal with the mistakes that we make or all those sorts of things. And again, I think you touched on it, that modelling that in the therapy room. When we talk a lot about the younger self and one of the things I'll often say to clients is, you know, how would you deal with that behaviour if it was coming from a child? We're a lot more compassionate if we think outside the box and think about it being a younger child that's made that mistake. But yeah, we don't do that to ourselves. Unfortunately. Yeah. You absolutely correct. Even something as simple as I'll say to them, you know, if you're trying to teach a kid to do a role in polling, they don't get it right first time.  Or would you encourage them and, you know, get them to have another go at it? That's what we need to be doing with ourselves. I couldn't agree more. So resilience will only grow in that type of fertile land. Yeah. And I do believe it, and I'm repeating, I realise I'm repeating this several times in this podcast, but I do believe that for most people, they need reprogramming in their own internal narrative. And you might actually have to say a different narrative for them to reflect on that. Yeah. And next in that process, again, they can hear your voice. There's a wonderful book by Milton Erickson, who probably was one of the most foremost hypnotherapists of his day, if you want to put it that way, well known in the NLP world, but, and of course the hypnotherapy world. And the book, and I can't remember when it came out, many moons ago now, I was titled Take My Words With You. That sounds like a lovely book. I might get that one. It's the idea that the therapist's words are given, or integrated, or implanted, whatever one's used, or imparted, probably is a better word, or the client to take as a gift. So when they're in the sort of world of stress or repetitive, destructive behaviours, they can hear their therapist's words, which will be so soothing to the vulnerable child, or the unconscious part, that they develop a resilience to find a new way to be. What a marvellous process that would be. And I believe that's what happens in therapy. I believe that we unconsciously, and sometimes consciously of course, we take the words of our therapist and hear them outside often in the world of stressful times, and we start to follow or take those permissions and do things in a different way. And that process leads to integration, and eventually we've integrated a new way of being so then we can let the therapist go. Now that happens over quite a long time, if you like, but I think it's what leads to a different script, what leads to real resilience that will stick. I love that, and I absolutely agree with you. So that's a good book, and it would be 30 years ago, it must be some, oh gosh, I bought that at least 30 years ago, Milton Erickson, a very famous hypnotherapist, and take my words with you. And it's the idea that we have a supportive, so that's why I started off this podcast talking about a supportive internal framework that will provide the fertile land and the sunshine to grow and build a resilience that will be there for our journey through life. It's such a powerful thing to have possession of resilience when you think about, do you know what to mean? Yeah. We have to build resilience, and in the therapy client dialogue, it will start with you. So when you talked earlier about in your, did you say members should club in you? Yeah. About these things and giving them different gifts of narratives. So when they leave, go about their life and stressful times come or don't come or whatever way you want to look at this, they will reflect on those words and hear those words and may give them the support to do something different. And that is the fertile ground of continued resilience. That's where the sun shines. I went on holiday recently or I was just thinking. And I got some sunshine on my back and I felt the sun on my back and that's where resilience grows in the light. And that's fantastic. That's why you hear this, the compassion, the love, the care of the other, and that will breed resilience. I think it's underestimated actually that, Bob. I think we should have that as a bumper sticker that resilience grows in the light and not in the darkness or whatever. It sounds so simple when you say it, but it's such a profound thing that we need an environment where we can grow and flourish in order to have resilience. We need to feel the sun on our back. We need to feel the warmth in our souls. That's been a bit of a deep one, this one, Bob, but I've enjoyed it. That's quite emotional actually. Well, that's where the resilience will grow. And he knows not resilience like plaster's the fall-off. There'll be resilience through the whole journey of our lifetime. And what will happen then is we'll pick people externally that are supportive and protective with us, as well as our internal protective self. Yeah. Following on from Milton Erickson and his book, Take My Work With You, I think for me, whether this is just my thing or not, if it resonates with me on a visceral level, if I'm emotional about something, then it kind of goes in. You know that bullseye that you were talking about? I don't know whether it was in the last episode or not.  That's real resilience. Not resilience that just drops away in the twilight of time. It's a great substance to this. Yeah, absolutely. And you can build on it layer upon layer upon layer.  It's feeding that and watering it and keeping it going. Yeah. And here's another example for you. So another place I went to recently, in the mornings around my walks, you know, it wasn't to do the 10,000 steps actually. But there was to get to this other layer. So here's the sea and the sand and then to go up to the actual ever sort of, actually, it was along some dunes with 70 steps. Wow. That's a lot of steps though.  So the sort of pathway if you like to the dunes that I was going to. And anyway, the first day, I was there 14 days, the first day, I ran up or attempted to run up and I did run up to the 70 steps. Yeah, I did. And I had to stop for two minutes. So I stopped the recording of the steps and things. Anyway, I was there 14 days, so it was 14 times I did these steps. But, you know, not only did I want to do it, so I didn't, you know, whether I said two minutes at top or three minutes at top, but the achievement and purpose, I needed to really have support internally and say things to myself to enable myself to actually continue on the journey and enjoy it. Yeah. Whether I took three minutes at the top, take my breath or five minutes, it wasn't so much that. It was more that I got to a place where it wasn't telling myself off on the journey. So one thing that's absolutely certain, anyway, is that resilience will only grow in lightness, not in the toxicity of a dark narrative. We have lightness on our soul. I really believe that. And we're also there from there. We will find friends and companions that will do the 70 steps with us. Yeah. I think that's important as well, finding like-minded people that are on the journey along with us and kind of are compassionate to themselves and others and, you know, kind of build up a tribe of people that are on the same journey. It's important. Yeah. Different community. Yeah. Different community of people. Because if we stay in that community of darkness and toxicity, we'll never even get at the steps in the first place, or we'll force ourselves and we'll get to the top and then we'll have to start again and it'll go around. And there'll be no enjoyment, no purpose, no love, no compassion. And life's a bit miserable from that place. Yeah. We need a community of well-supporting people. As I said, I wrote a book 30 or 40 years ago, which is about our best friend, if you like, is the friend within us. Yeah. Because they're always with us, we can't get rid of them. We can't rid of them. So I'm sure talking about resilience is, and I think, you know, the therapy space, if you like, is a space to be able to, and your membership club, by the way, sounded like it was a similar space, to start building up a sense of resilience and supportive resilience. Yeah, absolutely. Sounds like a good spatial membership group. I love it. And I'm always saying to them that they give me as much as what I give them. It's a very mutual two-way street in the membership. It's lovely. You sound like a good job. Yes. I wouldn't change it for the world. So until next time, Bob, where we will be discussed, I'm really looking forward to this next one because I don't know whether it's an age thing with me, but I do this a lot. Dealing with your own emotions in therapy. Well, have we not done a podcast on that yet? I don't think so. If we have, I don't know. I'll check it over. If we have, we'll just change it to another title. If it happens, well, I mean, that is a big subject. Well, if we have, I need to go back and listen to our own podcast then, Bob. Share with you, by the way. I've come up with another 50 topics. Lovely. That's another 12 months worth of podcast, Bob. I've enjoyed it. I've been, you know, as I've been going on in life, I think, what would I like to discuss now and jotted these things down? So so many things come to my head. But when we run out of some, just let me know and I'll send you this list there. Send it through. I'll put it in me, but I've got a little book, Bob, and I write it all down in my little box or send it. So if it's just, if we have done it, then we could even do it again. But either way, that's where we're going to start next week. Okay. Okay. Until next time, Bob. Thank you. Yeah. Take care. Bye bye. Have a week. Bye. You've been listening to The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


From DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com, I'm Darren Marlar and this is your Daily Dose of Weird News. If you're already an official weirdo, please share this video on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other social media to help get the word out. If you'd like to become an official weirdo, simply click that subscribe button and while you're at it, click that like button to let the world know that you're a weirdo. The owner of a clown motel in Nevada is looking to sell it. Anybody willing to own and run a clown hotel, they would have to be a real bozo. Katie Couric is leaving Yahoo News after three years. Katie says she's proud of the three years she's spent there, but apparently not enough to say Yahoo. Cosmetic surgeons have identified a new phenomenon among our computer-reliant generation described as Computer Face. They've noticed that sagging jowls and eye wrinkles are common on women who spend their days hunched over computers. The sagging jowls are caused by constantly looking down that shortens the neck muscles, making the neck baggy. The wrinkles are caused by people who squint and frown when concentrating on their screens. Doing it for long enough or often enough, that makes the wrinkles and lines permanent. I can hear it now, my wife tossing the computer out the second-floor window. Officials say a Spirit Airlines flight leaving Las Vegas on Sunday was briefly delayed after a passenger removed all their clothes while boarding and approached a flight attendant. While he had so much fun doing it during the TSA security check, he just couldn't wait to do it again. Amazon.com is under federal investigation for possibly violating U.S. sanctions against Iran by selling goods to at least one person listed on the government's terrorism list. And with Amazon Prime, those terrorists can enjoy Downton Abbey whenever they feel like it. The stereotype is that guys just won't ask for directions. But that's not always true. In a bizarre story coming out of the Middle East, it seems the pilot of a Kazakhstani chopper landed his $14 million military aircraft on a snowy highway, stopping trucks in their tracks. Well, soon the pilot hops out, runs to the first truck, shakes the driver's hand, has a chat, runs back to his gunship and takes off. Turns out the guy was just lost. He stopped to ask which way to Atobe. A video of the incident is now making the rounds, prompting the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defense to defend its trainee pilot. He was apparently sent out as part of a visual-orienting exercise in which he was supposed to figure out his way back by means of human survey. It's not clear, however, whether stopping to ask truckers counts as cheating. Why, hey, he asked a man for directions. Sounds like he figured his way back by means of a human survey to me. If you live to your 80s, you will have acquired six and a half feet of nose hair during your lifetime. Aren't you glad you know that now? Nearly one in four parents will deny their children this year some basic school items as they continue to struggle to cover the cost of returning to school. Nearly three quarters of parents surveyed feel that back-to-school spending is a financial burden and 27% say costs will negatively impact their household bills. Man, you know things are bad when you have to dip into your kid's college fund to buy him a protractor. In Seattle, a brewery is offering employees puppy parental leave a week off with pay when they adopt or rescue a dog. Hey, so you need a week off of work?  Do you get another week off when you get a new dog to replace the first dog? The mayor of a small town in Spain is being urged to bring in an exorcist as workers believe the city council offices are haunted and the ghost was even caught on camera. You know what, we should do the same thing in the USA to exercise the demons out of Congress. Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympics. So Olathe Kansas has been snubbed again. Hey, at least you know what, they better start now if they ever hope to get that Olympic torch through LA traffic. notification bell too, so you'll know when I post new videos. Find even more Weird News that I didn't have time for at DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com. I'm Darren Marlar and I'll see you next time, Weirdo's.


Good morning and thank you on behalf of our project partners for having us here today. My name is Lisa Donaldson and I'm the project manager on the What Works and Why project. There are many national and international reports that look at the challenges facing us in higher education, but also the potential for technology enhanced learning. Staff development is seen as the key to this. We wanted to provide opportunities for continuing professional development so that our teachers can work together, they can work smarter, they can work more collaboratively and most importantly they can make better use of technology enhanced learning approaches. So our project team here of DCU, AIT, Dundalk and Minuth University. What we look to do is to build digital literacy and engagement for both students and teachers by looking at the question what works and why from a discipline specific context. So what we were really seeking to do was to change mindsets as well as to augment skill sets. So to give you a brief overview of the project there were really three main strands to what works and why. Firstly that was the development of continuing professional development through workshops, seminars and drop-in clinics and these started very early in January and in fact are still continuing. We have a reschedule one next week but also were focused on our TEL week which was, excuse me, March 7th to 11th. The second string to the what works and why project was the supporting of TEL innovation projects. So we funded a number of projects across the participating institutions. And the third element of the project was to support teaching groups which are essentially peer mentoring circles. We're very pleased with what we've managed to achieve within a relatively short space of time. We've in fact over delivered on what our original proposal was which was to have 20 development events and eight peer mentoring circles and 10 TEL innovation projects. So that's quite the significant achievement over the six month period. What I want to do is share with you briefly the student voice and we thought it was important to capture the student voice at the beginning of the project to help inform our thinking as regards development. I'm just going to play you a small part of this. The students were asked a question here as regards their use of technologies and what technologies they see being used in the classroom. PowerPoint. I'm French and business so we use a lot of like translating software and prezzies, presentations, PowerPoint and just kind of YouTube as well for videos. By lectures it's mainly PowerPoint slides that I've seen amusing and some of them use a John pad kind of things where John that's it. In the classrooms mainly PowerPoint to be honest that's not all I can remember and so basically we don't even have that. PowerPoints at the odd time is smart technology so smart boards for using in private schools so we get reaped on that quite a lot how to use the smart boards. Generally it's just PowerPoint presentations. I think I'll pause there. I think can you see a general team coming through? Right so obviously for us then it was important that we supported more innovative use of technology enhanced learning tools to better support our students who are using more than PowerPoint in their day-to-day lives. As a result of that we developed a number of workshops which are as I said still ongoing. We asked our lecturers to come to us to attend the workshops. We went to them with drop-in clinics. We developed tabletop cards which were placed in communal areas supporting some highlighting the features of some of the tools that we were highlighting in the workshops so we went to them and they came to us and that's an initiative that's ongoing but just speaking of students we also developed these tabletop cards for students as well highlighting some of the tools that were particularly relevant to them and some of those were coming out of the projects the tele-innovation projects that we were actually funding. So just briefly to speak about the projects we had a number of different projects some very exciting results coming out of them that unfortunately we don't have time to go through today but we had projects and you can see that they're very focused on discipline specific areas. We've had screencasts and quizzes being developed within computing use of different tools like web works and engineering upgrading of digital media skills in the library but as you can see there's a wealth of other projects that we have supported all of them very focused on discipline specific areas and looking at technology enhanced learning use within those disciplines. A full list of all of the projects and in fact all of the outputs from the What Works and Why project is available on whatworksandwhy.ie. The second strand I mentioned was teaching groups which are effectively peer mentoring circles so these were by the teachers and for the teachers and they were large scale as well as small scale events. So this is an example of a teaching group taking place within computing where they use some very exciting new tools for helping programming robotics to Lego mind storms. Very interesting materials coming out of there. We've looked at there's a number of teaching groups that we've supported within the education field looking at portfolios and MOOCs. We have looked at supporting the teaching group within the School of Business which are looking at live polling and other ways to interact with students besides PowerPoint within the classrooms. But as you can see again there's a wealth of other teaching groups that we have supported as well as inter institutional groups where a number of our institutions have come together to share expertise and that's the goal behind it is to share expertise. So the Heinrichs 2013 research on the role of peer mentoring groups on scaffolding pedagogical change was really behind this. So I mentioned the last strand the tell week workshops. Again this is just a small snapshot of some of the workshops and seminars that we put on across the participating institutions. So in looking at those workshops we've had over 160 to date and there's still some numbers to add to that attend those workshops and events and we've started the evaluation of those workshops based on the impact evaluation framework by Colbert and Hinton and that looks at reach impact and practice impact and learners and impact on the project teams themselves. So at the moment as I say we're at the early stages of collecting information it's very much qualitative data that we have at the moment but as you can see on screen it's coming back as really really positive that it's had a big impact on the practice of those that got involved with the events and this is particularly important to us when we're looking at the sustainability and going forward of what we have started here with the what works and why project do you intend to investigate further something that you've learned as part of the project and over 90% of those who responded to date have said yes. So I think that's key to what we're trying to do here. To look at the impact of the projects themselves we've produced a lot of the groups have produced a lot of shareable outputs and they're very shareable across our partner institutions as well as in the broader context. So they may be I'm just picking a couple of examples can be quizzes and screencasts. I know there's videos in teaching that's available in sorry videos of nursing teaching that's going to be available shortly but also what each project and teaching group have produced is a briefing guide and that they're available and more are going to be posted to the what works on my website and what they're simply doing is providing an overview of what they've done their approach and the recommendations should anybody else be looking to introduce something similar. So there's a great wealth of knowledge there to be shared and speaking to sustainability the teaching groups that are now embedded in the faculties and the technology evangelists that we're see coming out of there. We expect that to continue that the continue on going and enhance the sustainability of the project beyond the six months. Thanks Lisa. So just addressing some of the feedback that we got from the panel the first time around you asked us you we specifically chose a discipline based approach rather than a thematic approach to do this and you warned us of the pitfalls quite rightfully. So what we had done was we've made sure that we had specific discipline specific supports there. We had regular reporting going on regular conversations going on between the various teaching groups and we also made sure the teaching groups were talking to one another. The student voice was very very important to us Lisa alluded to a video earlier on but also what we were able to do was in a lot of the teaching innovation projects students directly participated and imported into them. So the local and national impact so we're dividing it into two particular two particular areas. The local impact. Let's just talk about within the institutions this money this project created a huge buzz within their institutions at a local level what we don't because we went with the discipline based approach. We got people thinking and talking about teaching. We got them thinking not as individuals and not talking as individuals but talking within groups within their own disciplines and that had a huge knock on effect. Now there's no doubt time was an issue absolutely the time restrictions and everybody's mentioned it but trying to twist that positive or that negative into a positive. The optimist for me says we've laid the foundations we've sown a seed for what works and why to that's simply the way we see it because rather than trying to see all the negatives that we could have done this we could run that as Lisa said we over delivered as a section as a project as a whole but we could have done so much more we want to do so much more as a national impact just looking at the social media side of things we set up a Twitter group of Twitter hashtag to follow with over 200 tweets and nearly 400 followers now at this stage we've got a significant following that will continue beyond the project. The website has had over 2000 views to it and this is the hope that shares all of these shareable outputs examples to which you have in front of you. From conference presentations Ed Tech was mentioned earlier on not only did we have several presentations from across to partners presenting at the conference we had loads of people involved in the projects that just came to attend that hadn't tended before and that to me was a key output of the project. We had specific discipline ones in that loan there's a science education one. We've been accepted to present at the alt conference which is a very highly respected one in the UK and again taking examples my policies I think it's alone again have put in a submission for a decedent conference so it's beyond the Irish community is where we're having impact and these are peer reviewed so it's not Mickey Mouse stuff that we're presenting by any stretch of the imagination. The key thing for us is that integration the literature tells us this integration of talent pedagogically sound ways and that's that's the key thing we're not leading with the technology we're leading with pedagogy has to be embedded in course design and a tight time frame of this project made that hard to measure the impact but again I go back to the saying they're on turning on on that side we've sown the seed we've sown the seed with these projects and we're going to see this integrated in with all the teaching and learning projects we're going to see this impact next semester and a semester afterwards because all the videos we created at the screencast for mentioned earlier on in other ones all quizzes all the interactive teaching techniques our teaching groups have learned will be implemented next semester we touch all the disciplines to four corners as I say we have examples from all of the partners touching science and business and computing and nursing but what happens now is the business guys can talk to the science guys and the computing guys and so on and so I'm very confident that we will with this seed that will grow into so much more what we found is that this project has given a lot of people to to have critical reflection and have that stimuli to do so much more and that if nothing else it's brilliant what we have done here we have came together as a consortium of institutions through the form with this common goal getting the timing here now so upon reflection I have three things really to put out what we said we deliver versus what we actually delivered Lisa touched on it earlier on we said we would have 20 events we had 34 we said we would have eight teaching groups we had 15 we said we would have 10 innovative projects we had 26 now I still believe we were ambitious in the targets we set considering all the factors against us but we over delivered because of the staff in each one of the institutions the evaluation data is very very positive coming back and and for me that's that says it all as Lisa said over 90% of the the respondents so far said yes we will do something else we use a framework we didn't just lash out the happy sheets we use the cool bear framework measuring the impact on the the teacher the impact on the student the impact on the team and and that's how we we structured our evaluations looking forward greater flexibility of time we've all said this right looking forward what I see coming out of this is now the projects that started in that lawn can be spread to Dundalk can be spread to DCU can be spread to Manus right already we have in the academic writing is is one that's already an institutional program that's are sorry an inter institutional collaboration that's doing very well but I see the individual projects the nursing skills that can easily go from Dundalk out to the three partners and three other partners the maths ones that can easily go and spread so so looking forward we've only seen the seed I genuinely believe that it will be a super project for us I I stood before you here's whatever seven months ago and I said we wanted to change a mindset not just a skill set and I firmly believed that we've started to do this with this project and it couldn't have happened without the partners we were for individual islands but brought together as a common goal I see the next stage to what works and why to is where more into to insert institutional collaboration happens but as I say the seed seed has been so thank you


Hello and welcome to the session in which we would look at differential analysis and specifically we're going to be looking at make or buy decision and in the business term we call this outsourcing. This topic is covered on the cost and a cost accounting course as well as the CPA exam, BEC section. As always, I'm going to remind you to connect with me on LinkedIn and check out my YouTube where I have 1800 plus accounting, auditing, tax, finance, as well as Excel tutorials. If you like my lectures, please like them and share them. Look, if they're benefiting you, it means they might benefit other people. Please share the wealth. On my website farhatlectures.com, you will find additional resources to complement and supplement this course as well as other accounting and finance courses. I strongly suggest you check out my website. So let's take a look at make or buy decision or outsourcing. What are the decision goals? What should we do? Well, we should choose the option with the lowest relevant costs and hopefully we all know what relevant costs are. If not, I'm going to remind you about relevant costs in a moment. That's the first thing we look at. We have compared the relevant costs and we take into account qualitative consideration on the good thing about being in school. You don't have to worry about qualitative consideration. All you have to worry about is the quantitative, the relevant cost. But in the real world, you have to take a look into account if there's any factors other than the numbers that will help you reject or accept make or buy offer. So remember the relevant costs are the differential costs. And what are the differential costs? Usually they are the direct labor, direct material, variable overhead. Usually the variable cost. Why? Because variable cost varies with your production. So if you are going to be buying it, those will be eliminated, should be eliminated. Also, you have to take a look to see if you can eliminate some of the fixed costs. Some of the fixed costs might be eliminated as a result of buying the product. Because if you are using a building, you may just end your lease in that building and you're not using it anymore. You may cancel the lease and move out and remove that fixed cost. That's a possibility. But again, in our situation, you're going to be told in the problem whether the fixed cost is eliminated or not. And obviously you have to take into account your buying it to purchase price. How much are you paying for it? Usually those are the three factors that you would look into when you are making make or buy decision. The best way to illustrate this is to look at an actual example. Cube manufacturing usually produces its own parts of assembly. The following data are available for the parts. This is the manufacturing cost. They have a variable cost of $6 per unit and they have a fixed cost of $15,000. Non-manufacturing cost, there's a variable cost of $1 fixed cost of $9,000. And this is the fixed cost. Again, we could always assume, not assume, but generally speaking, variable costs will be eliminated if you buy the product. Cube needs 2,000 units every month and outside supplier offers to deliver that part for $1150. What should we do? Should we accept the offer or not accept the offer? Cube can also save half of the fixed manufacturing cost. So this fixed manufacturing cost is $15,000. If we buy, we no longer have to worry about half of it, so we could eliminate $15,000. We still have the other $15,000. There's nothing we can do about this $9,000. Fixed non-manufacturing are not affected. So what should we do? Well, we have to compare between two alternatives. What we are doing now and the alternative, what are we are doing now? Well, right now, we are incurring variable cost of $7, which is 6 plus 1 times 2,000 unit, which is equal to $14,000. So the variable cost right now is $14,000. We have $15,000 and $9,000 of fixed cost, that's $24,000. In total, let's see in total, how much would that be? In total, we'll have, right now, it's costing us $38,000. What is the alternative? Well, the alternative, if we buy from another party, we no longer have any variable cost. That's going to be gone. The fixed manufacturing, the fixed cost, some of it will be eliminated. Remember, we're going to keep the $7,500 of the non-manufacturing and the non-manufacturing will stay with us all of it. So we're going to have $16,500 of fixed cost. Plus, we're going to have to buy the product of $423,000. So if we buy, the factor is $39,500, the total cost. So basically, if we look at the difference, variable cost will be lower, fixed cost will be lower, but the purchase price will be higher by $23,000. The net is a higher of $1,500. Now the question is, what should you do? Based on the numbers, based on strictly quantitative numbers, you would reject. You don't want to buy from an outside party. Now, why would you buy? Well, there are other non-qualitative factors. For example, the quality of the unit, maybe this company that you are buying from, part A31, and that's all what they do. And because that's all what they do, they may be specialized into this product. And as a result, they might have a better quality. And as a result, it might be worth it for you to pay the $1,500. Also, if you outsource, you may simplify and streamline your operation. You have one less thing to worry about. Therefore, maybe it's worth $1,500, this extra money to pay to streamline and make your process much, much smoother at your company. Let's add an assumption here. If the facility used to produce part A31 can be leased out to generate a monthly rental income of $3,000, what should we do under those circumstances? Now we're changing the scenario. We are saying what happened if you do buy, you could lease this extra space for $3,000. Well, guess what? What are you doing now? Well, right now, basically this $3,000 is an opportunity cost. This is a good example of an opportunity cost. Simply put, because you are producing the product yourself, it's taken up a space. Because it's taken up a space, there's an opportunity cost that you are missing out. And what's that opportunity cost? The next best thing you can do with that space is rent it for $3,000, lease it out. Therefore, what it's really costing you, your true cost is the $14,000, the $24,000. Plus, there's an opportunity cost of $3,000. Therefore, your true cost is $41,000. That's your true cost, assuming you take into account opportunity cost. If you buy it, it's going to cost you same computation, $39,500. Now what happened is this? Now we change our computation. And as a result, we find out that you are better off buying the product because you are at $1,500 lower. Now, another way to look at this $3,000 is to say, well, it doesn't have to be an opportunity cost. Really, what's going to happen? It's going to be an extra income for you because you can rent the property. Basically, it's a reduction here. So whatever you have the $3,000 as an opportunity cost here or the $3,000 as a savings under buying it, because you have extra income, it's going to cost you less to buy, it doesn't matter. The answer will be $1,500 lower. Now the question is, what should you do? If you're taken into account this $3,000, should you buy or should you not buy? Again, you have to take into account the quality of the suppliers. And remember, now you have to worry about renting the property at $3,000. So you have to find a tenant. If you find a tenant, what happens if you have a bad tenant? They don't pay. They give you a lot of problems. So that could be an issue. Also, when you buy from another company, their problems become your problem in what sense? Once you rely on them, anything that happened at that company like a strike or there's a change of management and as a result, now they have inferior product. That's going to affect you. Also, because you are buying from them, you have to worry about the logistics. How are they going to deliver it to you? What if there's any problem in the supply chain? Let's assume you are relying on from someone in China and we are living through COVID. What's going to happen to your supply chain? Well, your product, they may or may not be able to deliver the product. So that's why you have to take into account other factors than just the numbers. That's the point that I'm trying to make. So again, what I'm going to do, I'm going to invite you to like this recording. If you like it, share it. And also, I'm going to remind you to visit my website, farhatlectures.com for additional resources for this course as well as your other courses. If you're studying for your CPA exam, I strongly suggest you check out my website, make an investment in your career. It's a 30 to 40 year investment if you pass the exam. Don't shortchange yourself. Good luck. Study hard. And most importantly, stay safe. Thank you.


Welcome back, let us continue with our study of the ideal gas. Now we should remember that any ideal gas was characteristic with Obey's-Boil's law all over its state space. Combine this with our definition of the ideal gas Kelvin scale of temperature and you get its equation of state which can either be written down as pv equals mrt which also equals n into universal gas constant into T. We should also remember that because of the relationship between mass and moles, there is a relationship between the gas constant R and the universal gas constant R u and that is R equals R u divided by molecular weight. So if you know R u which is a famous number 8.314 kilojoule per kilo mole Kelvin and divided by the molecular weight of that particular gas, we will get a gas constant for that gas. The third characteristic which we have not seen so far is that any ideal gas obeys Joule's law. Just the way Boil experimented with the pvT characteristic of the equation of state of an ideal gas, Joule experimented with the thermal energy of an ideal gas and he discovered that for an ideal gas, any ideal gas the thermal energy we will write it as specific thermal energy is a function only of temperature. Notice that Joule's law is a restrictive law because any gas is a fluid system, we will require two properties to define any other property. So Boil's law and equation of state tell us that T and V define temperature or T and V define pressure. So even internal energy should be specified in terms of two properties. It could be pressure and volume or temperature and volume or could be pressure and temperature. However it turns out that it can be expressed always as a function only of temperature, you need not have the second variable which could either be pressure or volume. As a consequence of this, let us say the corollary of this is when we define H called enthalpy say derived property it is defined as U plus the product of pressure and volume. Let us work in terms of specific enthalpy, divide this definition throughout by the mass of our system and we get H is U plus pV. Now consider an ideal gas. What happens for an ideal gas? Let us see on the right hand side. U is a function only of temperature because of Joule's law and what is pV? pV by Boil's law and equation of state is only RT. So the first term is a function only of temperature, the second term is a function only of temperature. Hence it turns out that for an ideal gas H also is a function only of temperature. Now let us plot for a typical ideal gas the specific thermal energy as a function of temperature and the specific enthalpy as a function of temperature. Since there is no effect of pressure or volume, this is a curve which is almost a straight line. Similarly H is also a curve which is almost a straight line and because of this the fact that the variation of U with temperature is a reasonably accurate straight line over a reasonably wide range of temperature and the H T behavior is also similar. It is important for us to look at the slope that becomes interesting, slope of the U against T curve and slope of the H against T curve. This slope we can write as dU by dt and this slope we can write as dH by dt. This slope and this slope here give us the definition of specific heats. The general definition of specific heats is the specific heat at constant volume is defined as the variation of U with respect to T at constant volume and the specific heat at constant pressure is defined as the variation of H with respect to T at constant pressure. Why is it constant volume here? Why is it constant pressure here that we will appreciate later when we consider properties of various fluids that will occur quite sometime later after our study of the second law of thermodynamics. One thing to note is that the name here specific heat at constant volume and the name here specific heat at constant pressure are historical terms which we continue to use. Remember the most important thing to note that although they are called specific heats they are just derivatives of one property with respect to another. They have no direct relation with the heat interaction. It is only for historical reasons that we continue to use the term specific heat. Now coming back to our ideal gas characteristic, it turns out that for an ideal gas, any ideal gas since U is a function only of temperature and H is a function only of temperature, Cv turns out to be du by dt. We do not have to say constant volume because U depends only on temperature and Cp turns out to be the ordinary derivative of H with respect to T because H is a function only of temperature. To emphasize this we may even write this is du by dt where U is a function only of temperature and dH by dt where H is a function only of temperature. Finally we have a still simpler approximation. If we notice what we said that the U against T characteristic is almost a straight line. Similarly the H against T characteristic is almost a straight line. So let us further approximate and let us consider an ideal gas where these two behaviors variation of U with T and variation of H with T are exact straight lines and that would mean that our specific heats Cv and Cp would be constant because the slope is the same throughout for U as well as for H and that gives us a simpler approximation an ideal gas with constant specific heats. The advantage of this is for such a gas Cv is some constant Cp is also some other constant and because of this if we consider two states say state 1 and state 2 in terms of say T1, T1, V1, T2, T2, V2. Notice that any two of these say T and P are sufficient to specify the state because if we specify T and P the specific volume will come out of the equation of state. Then it is very easy to determine U2 minus U1 which will be delta U from 1 to 2. This in the general case will be integral Cv dT from state 2 state 1 to state 2 but because now Cv is a constant this can be written down as Cv into T2 minus T1 which will be Cv into delta T from 1 to 2. In a similar fashion delta H the change in enthalpy from state 1 to state 2 which will be H2 minus H1 which will be in the general case integral from 1 to 2 Cp dT this will be simply written down as Cp into T2 minus T1 which will be Cp delta T 1 to 2. We should notice that this part is true for any ideal gas whereas the simplification on the right is true for an ideal gas with constant Cp Cv that is constant specific heats. Finally, let us look at some other relation and definitions for an ideal gas. Let us go back to our definition of enthalpy. Enthalpy is defined as U plus Pv. So, for an ideal gas this turns out to be H of T is U of T plus RT. It does not matter whether the ideal gas here at constant specific heats or not. Now let us differentiate this equation with respect to temperature that is easy to do because each and every term here is a function only of temperature and you will get dH by dT is du by dT plus R and using the relation that for an ideal gas dH by dT will be Cp and du by dT will be Cv. We can write that Cp equals Cv plus R remember that this is only for an ideal gas. You should also notice that Cp Cv R all have the same units. These would be joule per kilogram Kelvin or kilojoule per kilogram Kelvin and finally the definition. Since Cp and Cv have the same units, we quite often find it useful to define its ratio. This ratio is known as the ratio of specific heats. Common symbol is the Greek letter gamma and it is defined simply as Cp by Cv. Thank you.


Good evening. I'm Austin Davis the director of government affairs with the Lake Champlain Chamber, and you're watching live at 525 We like to take over once in a while here. That's the Lake Champlain Chamber and host this segment and Use it as an opportunity to bring in a community leader or someone working on something interesting in our region to talk about You know how it affects our business community our our economy and our collective prosperity prosperity The Lake Champlain Chamber is one of the largest chambers in the state and we serve the greater Burlington area and With me tonight. I've I've got chief Tom Burke from the South Burlington Police South Burlington Police Department and we're just wanted to talk a little bit about some public safety issues and the You know some of the concerns that folks have had around the community That are manifesting themselves in some legislative action potentially in Montpelier and you'll be in Montpelier on Friday to testify as I Seemed to recall. Yes. Hello So by way of an attraction might you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. So my name is Sean Burke I've served in Vermont law enforcement for the last 30 years I started my career with the Woodstock Vermont Police Department served there for two years before I transitioned to The Burlington Police Department where I served 21 years and now since 2018. I've had the Great fortune to serve as the police chief in the city of South Burlington That's Certainly a long career in law enforcement. You've seen multiple eras of law enforcement I guess tell me a little bit if there's much difference between being serving in Burlington and serving in South Burlington You know, it's a smaller force and you've got a kind of different community Yeah, certainly so South Burlington historically has been a suburban city. Of course that landscape is changing which is fantastic We're actually developing an urban center in our in on Market Street downtown And we have a plethora of housing opportunities that have gone up and that are scheduled to go up in 2024 so it's it's really opportunistic for me because having served in Burlington the you know Vermont's actual big city if you will to see how South Burlington is evolving that way and you also have to evolve police operations in that way Yeah, a new downtown core kind of means a whole new type of patrol different type of way of doing business and I Personally live in Wanooski and we always call ourselves Vermont's Opportunity City And it's when you look over at South Burlington and everything growing and changing and the new employers coming in there Suddenly feels like they're trying to take that title sometimes it's a really vibrant community and you know We're fortunate to have a fantastic city council great leader in our city manager and the vibrancy is is red on par Yeah, city manager that you did take from Wanooski We try our best to forgive you So tell me a little bit about some of what you're seeing in South Burlington, you know, especially with these changes some some of the changes in You know violations of the law community policing what what it's happening Yeah, there's a few things that I've actually come home the roost in South Burlington Now that we do have a little more urban grit and what we're seeing are obviously the symptoms of substance use disorder We have a number of untreated unhoused folks that are living in parking lots living in their vehicles And that's disheartening on many levels. It's also An area where we're seeing a great deal of retail theft Occurring from our large retail sectors both on Dorset Street and along the Shelburne Road Corridor, we're also seeing the acute mental health crisis in this state and the fact that the systems of care are simply Overwhelmed and we are having to try to help those neighbors that are suffering and guide them back unfortunately, the answer always seems to be the hospital and The hospital is you know, not well equipped to deal with the volume of folks that are in crisis in the community So those things come, you know front of mind Ways in which South Burlington is Building capacity or has built capacity historically. We are home to the methadone clinic The Chittinac clinic located on San Remo Drive that clinic serves a thousand remoners through Methadone treatment and it quietly sits there And I like to point that out to folks that are a little fearful of what drug treatment looks like and We work closely with their security staff on whatever issues may crop up in that area And also some of the housing opportunities that have been developed most recently braver in apartments is now occupied So we're seeing people transition into Into those homes now, but of course, you know, not everyone is ready for treatment or housing and there is at times an instability and Unfortunately because of the overwhelming systems of the overwhelmed systems of care The police are often called especially after hours to come and deal with whatever the problem is. Yeah No, it's an interesting dynamic where you know for There's been over the last few years a large discussion around how people don't want to be calling the place for everything How there might be need to push policing actions to other places But at the same time it feels like more and more just getting piled on the police as other systems are kind of failing and Crumbling or insufficient to to handle all the need that's out there. Yeah, certainly. I mean, we do have help in that regard We do have we're one of the subscribing communities to the community outreach team So through the designated agency Howard, we do have that capacity right now It's Monday through Friday essentially business hours less than clinicians that will either do a co-response Or will respond on their own to kind of take apart some of these mental health crises But oftentimes the level of danger the person is presenting is either You know very apparent or unknown and that usually does trigger rightfully so a co-response So what do you say is contributing at most to this? I mean, we're coming out of global pandemic We've seen new substances find their way into our communities There's housing crisis. I mean, what else is comes into these contributing factors or those are the main ones So those are the big drivers right now. So poverty You know folks that are living in the community whether with a formal diagnosis of mental health or that are just situationally in crisis substance use disorder that's Not being met with treatment or the person is treatment resistant Those are really our top drivers and of course, there's you know a perception of around folks that are houseless and You know just because you're asleep in a car in a parking lot Doesn't mean that you're suffering an overdose doesn't mean that you're there to commit a crime But the community doesn't quite know how to reconcile that and I feel as though that You know that we desperately need to figure out, you know If these folks were living in congregate housing before the pandemic Do we need to figure out how to do Congregate housing better now in order to avoid the problem having folks sleep in public spots Yeah, this is something that we had at the late chamber was engaged with in the legislative session last year there was a conversation about a homeless bill of rights and That this will actually resume this session but there was this vague language around activities associated with homelessness and You know one thing we kept bringing up was what is that? because that is very broad and it depends on who you ask what those activities are and You know a lot of the perception in the community Unfortunately associates many negative and sometimes criminal acts towards just being homelessness and Many of the folks who are struggling with homelessness are just that they're in such a struggle that they're not causing a lot of harm to the rest of the Community they're very much focused on themselves and getting by and so you don't want that just kind of blanket You know vague term applying to anyone's perception and so Yeah, it's interesting that you speak that I speak about that and it does point to just you know housing being one of the Foundational issues in our communities. I can't agree more. Yeah So you're speaking of housing I mean I talked to employers all the time in our community and I talked to them about staffing and housing is one of the Biggest components that's holding back staffing for them. I've got to assume you're facing the same thing What was your staffing like? Yeah, so across the country police The police profession is suffering and locally here in South Burlington. We currently have 34 police officers employed We're authorized to have 40 police officers and what that really means in terms of service delivery Delivery is we have our officers Allotted generally to patrol and we do not have as many officers in special assignments like detectives the drug task force or in our school resource officer positions simply because we don't have them and the applicants for police officers are not plentiful right now and what we saw through 2020 and 2022 is that officers that were eligible for retirement? They did so and With that you lose decades of experience and it's great You know to hire a bunch of new officers and send them off to Pittsburgh twice a year But they have no experience when they go and it's going to be you know 17 weeks at the police academy is the standard there and then once they come back to us It's another 15 weeks of field training before they can go on a single radio call by themselves And you can't compromise on that because that then you're putting people potentially in danger. That's right so tell me actually talked to me a little bit about Pittsburgh and the Residential Academy this is something that I was At a lunch set of breakfast that the Burlington mayor put on and when new ski mayor put on a little while ago And they call this out as an impediment to getting community members engaged in the police force Is it something you're feeling South Burlington to? Yeah, I think the profession in general the Residential Academy is a great fit for a lot of people So when I think about the 22 year old Sean Burke in 1994 I was served well by the Residential Academy when we think about Other more diverse candidates whether they're a little bit older their parents They have different things going on in their lives It makes sense that we figure out a path forward to an alternative model but what we can't do is slow the pipeline now and You know the thing about the Academy is it's really tremendously under resourced in terms of staff there And they rely on our practitioners to serve as the instructors I just got the report today South Burlington police instructors spent 303 hours this year instructing across all the curriculum there And that's work. We have to do in order to produce police officers. So in order to change Our posture or our model is going to take a lot of strategic thought and I think as a hiring agency With both options on the table, you're gonna have to think about what your recruit officer is best served by So there's gonna have to be a level of being judicious and saying well This person's got all this career life experience Maybe and can't go stay somewhere for a number of months We're gonna find another alternative path to get them in a place for us. Yeah, that would be the you know The perfect solution. Gotcha. Gotcha What else is I mean, obviously there's been some some a lot of community discussion and soul-searching over Policing that's made the profession a little bit You know non-advantageous looking to new recruits. What else is serving as an impediment? I think The next thing that's really close is the lack of accountability in the system right now Officers tell me on a daily basis how demoralizing it is to go out and arrest the same recidivists over and over again for You know what what are minor misdemeanor crimes, but actually caught really? You know hard at the fabric of the community both in terms of economic vitality and also public safety So I know we like to point to low vialing crime rates across the country now And that there shouldn't be this sense of we're not safe But if you've lived in a neighborhood for 20 years and your car has never been Broken into or ransacked in the middle of the night or your packages have never been stolen and suddenly that's going on That makes you feel unsafe. Yeah in the space that that is yours So we need to take that serious And in terms of you know what the officers are facing with recidivists We really need some policy changes around what it means when you've been arrested For a crime, you know misdemeanor from minor misdemeanor crime and you've been given court conditions imposed court conditions and What does it mean when you violate those conditions because right now? There's no teeth in that dog. Yeah, let's I wanted to tell you a little bit about that So let's talk about explain conditions are released to me. This is something that's Kind of on the docket in Montpelier. Folks are interested in this. It's kind of folks are starting to Feel their way towards this as being the cause of a lot of our recidivism so an individual they get arrested they need to get arraigned they go before a judge and At this point a state's attorney or deputy state's attorney They're gonna ask the judge for our conditions release. Is that right? Yeah So it you know, there's statutory framework around here to your point about the legislatures The legislative session coming up once the judge has found probable cause There is then this analysis done a risk-of-flight analysis Generally cash bail is really held for those that have been charged with a crime of violence Other folks that might get bail are ones that have not been responsive to prior Engagements with the court that we call it a history of failure to appear But what we've seen grow especially with the court backlog is Defendants who are racking up countless misdemeanors. So let's we'll use retail theft as an example They are committing retail theft on a weekly basis. They've been arraigned They have conditions of release to say that in many cases don't commit new crimes Don't return back to the place that you had stolen from and that's racked with the victims of that crime Exactly whatever the court feels are reasonable, you know to keep the community safe and to ensure future appearances of Of this defendant and time and time again What we're seeing is blatant disregard by the defendants for those conditions are released They're getting arraigned on new charges and then put back out on either amended Conditions or very consistent conditions that they have chronically violated and so either I feel like the classic Hollywood law and order kind of view of bail is you know You put the bail in there to keep the person in and jail So they can't commit more crimes or they can't do things but in Vermont that the language is pretty specific It's it's flight risk and a lot of these folks aren't gonna flee their community or try to flee justice They're just gonna make more trouble in their community and that's kind of in a gray area. That's what you're saying Yeah, it certainly is and you know, I think it's probably an area where You know flight from prosecution should be part, you know Failure to abide by conditions of release should be the part of the calculus on a flight risk because you're you're avoiding prosecution essentially because you know you're not gonna be prosecuted and I don't think the answer is Necessarily like throwing everyone in jail. It's not really long and cursive sentences But there has to be really expedient intervention by the court in order to deter the criminal behavior So, you know the calculus on the defendant side of this is am I gonna get caught? And if I do what's actually gonna happen to me? Well, yeah, and so that's something that folks are pointing in a lot, too It's just that the inevitability of consequences or how rapidly the consequences has come and with our court backlog It is quite a long time. I was talking to someone who's a board was in a conversation with someone Who's a former state trooper and they're saying that they're they're actually dealing with 2018 DUI cases still like that are going through the court system. So Long delayed and you know, if you're committing some kind of crime saying well They're not gonna get to me anytime soon doesn't seem to be immediate consequences to actions Nothing incentivizes the person to not Go out and do those actions again, correct? Yeah, absolutely And those that are justice-involved they totally know because of the backlog on the trial docket those serious crimes of violence felonies DUIs Those are going to be heard at trial well before their cases and the longer they can The longer they can delay that time they the plea deal is just gonna get better They're near the trial space. I'm never gonna go for them wholesale rate It's a great example if you can just kind of keep and in keeping underneath that threshold of what is a serious crime Right, that'd be correct. Yeah, so the delineation really is a crime of violence Yeah So which there's a lot of logic as to why you would impose bail in those cases But there has to be a better solution for these what are considered minor misdemeanor crimes But we have recidivists that are just ravaging particularly our retail community Yeah, I'll say retail theft is kind of one of those those types of crimes where if you know if you stay at a certain level You can then kind of continue on these and I Was wondering if you could talk a little bit more because you have a quite a retail Community in South Burlington and they're experiencing this. Yeah, it's certainly and you know just as an example We Responded to just under 500 reported incidents of retail theft in 2023. We're still distilling that data and you know back when I first became a police officer the felony threshold for retail theft was a $100 even then that struck me is too low so over the years it was changed to $900 to match that of Grand larceny versus misdemeanor larceny and that just seems to be too high and When we think about the defendant's calculus about am I going to be caught and what's going to be hap what's gonna happen to me? potentially if that threshold was were lower not to a hundred dollars, but somewhere else and The conduct was actually a felony that would allow the police to make an arrest in that moment for that crime And I believed that that potentially could have a deterrent effect Where's right now? They're just citing the individual if if they're talking to them at all Certainly in a lot of cases and then you're depending on the relationship with your lost prevention Community a lot of these are late report. So lost prevention will have found the footage of You know 12 tool kits being stolen and provided to us and then Inevitably, we know who they actor is and then we have to track them down and cite them in the court Yeah, and so You know, I think that gets out another thing Which is I think that there's there's a quite a fatigue on a reporting fatigue You know so you mentioned kind of numbers Being that and just immediately go. Oh, I feel like I've heard almost as many reports myself That doesn't feel right. Do you feel like there's a reporting fatigue around some of these like lower level property? Misdemeanor crimes within our communities. Yeah, certainly in the retail space I mean some corporations have a policy of not intervening with retail theft and not reporting So that those numbers aren't even in the calculus a lot of our High-drivers are entity, you know businesses that have dedicated lost prevention. So they're actually out doing the work and apprehent making apprehensions But I think retail theft in general is greatly underreported as is like larceny from a motor vehicle You know you go out you realize that you left your car unlocked your car was rummaged through Maybe something was taken. Maybe not not everyone's calling the police in those instances. Yeah, or they're finding out too late I had a friend who recently Had their unfortunate situation with the left their car unlocked and had a checkbook stolen Took him a few weeks to learn that that was still and they thought it was in the glove box And it was quite a lot of work after that when they had made that realization Yeah, so I mean what can what can community members do? I mean, I know that there's there's a lot of You know, you're ramping up your efforts on the police front legislators are Re-evaluating some of these thresholds they're talking about potentially Adding up misdemeanor offenses related to retail theft to make them a felony What can your normal folks on the street do yeah, so in two different spheres So at home in in your neighborhood if you own a car, please lock it and take your keys Do not leave valuables in your car whether you're in your driveway or a shopping center We could cut the number of thefts from motor vehicles dramatically if folks would do that Likewise with the trend that we've seen with stolen cars a Vast majority of our stolen car reports are unlocked with the keys left in them Vermont We used to be able to do those things and no longer And so that could be of great help and when we talk with our partners in the retail space You customer service, of course, it's hard to hire anyone right now with the workforce crisis But great customer service is one of the best deterrents to retail theft You know if you can have an employee on the floor that says how about I hold that while you finish your shopping Or is there something that can help you find? We know that the suspects don't like to be in contact with the actual employees of the store as well as Thinking really strategically about how you set up your store and not having high-value items near exit points it not having multiple exit points if that's a possibility and Also the use of you know security cameras and other things that we know Particularly with this recidivist population They're looking for when they're kind of staking their claim as to where they're going to commit their criminal acts So what I mean, we're coming up on the end of our time here But what else do you see as needed in terms of you know, just overall kind of system change to kind of Turn the tide on what we're feeling. I think there's some Debate still around whether our current issues of public safety are more perception or not I'm in the camp of it's definitely not perception. I would say that even if it was Just perception perception is important too But what do you feel like needs to be done to turn the tide? We need to double down on the mental health crisis, you know we have to figure out what's going on and get left a boom on this issue and It's really tragic to see how some folks are suffering in our community and as Vermonters We just need to do better and in a similar way housing People find more success. They have more stability in their life when they're housed Yeah housing is a just I recommend anyone who's watching we had a great conversation with Norse West Vermont Realtors Association a few weeks ago just talked about how We're just not keeping up with the like we're not growing our housing stock Even close to the rate at which housing is coming offline because we do have the second-old housing stock in the country And so people a lot of times forget they take this We don't want to grow mindset and to not grow housing stock is to actually be content with losing housing stock each year and unfortunately Our population will I would be fortunate if they grew but our population isn't is continually growing too so it's crowding folks out and You know we at the lake chamber had a memo that a white paper we sent out with a number of organizations and We identified housing as one of the big components of our Current you know public safety crisis and one thing we kept Noting is that it's not just the individuals who are struggling with homelessness it's those who are responding and assisting the individuals who are struggling with homelessness if police officers and EMS workers and doctors and nurses and Folks at the designated agencies like the Howard Center Can't find staff because they can't find housing or those individuals are housing and secure Makes it really hard for them to hope folks who are very hard to house get into housing too and that is you know really why the Lake Champlain chambers completely focused this legislative session almost entirely on Housing and public safety are dual crises in the state No, it's fantastic. There are there is no South Burlington Cop firefighter or Howard community outreach worker that could go out on their salary and buy a home in our community And even if they can rent a place, it's generally a couple of them Spending some time as roommates for a number of years before they can save up a little bit money for the American dream And as much as I know you'd like to go and advocate for a budget that gets on the salary That's not reasonable either. I think there was a great piece that said Not long ago that you know your average salary depth increased about 55% in order to afford most housing That's on the market these days You know we need to invest in that place as well as investing in our mental health and other services that we have in the state Well, we're coming up on the last couple minutes any parting thoughts or no, I appreciate you having me in I think you know what we're seeing on the street is really a combination of a crisis involving substance use disorder mental health and poverty and I want all South Burlington residents to know that their police department is responding to every incident in person Providing the best possible police service we can despite our staffing challenges. Well, if you're interested in more We just had the South Burlington Police Department Website up on the screen and you can always learn more about the Lake Champlain Chamber and our efforts at just lccvermont.org and Feel free to reach out to either of us with questions comments concerns about this these crises that we're dealing with as a state and hopefully over the next Four-ish months. We'll see some substantive action in Montpelier some investments in this Health and service infrastructure some investments in our housing that will hopefully start to turn the tide It won't happen overnight. We didn't get here overnight But we can start making the right Right choices taking the right steps to turn it around. So thank you for coming on chief. Appreciate it. Happy New Year. Happy New Year