Safety Division Courses and Workshops
Housing Professionals

Law enforcement professionals, in collaboration with community partners such as school counselors and administrators, are tasked with the job of keeping our schools, colleges, and workplaces free of violence and acts of targeted aggression, commonly known as mass shootings. This course offers a practical approach to recognizing and preventing violence in schools, colleges, workplaces, and communities. This course is designed to provide the terminology, assessment, and intervention skills needed to identify threats and develop a community-based, collaborative mitigation plan.

Designed for law enforcement professionals, but inclusive of all community partners, participants will learn how to develop a violence risk mitigation plan tied to a multi-disciplinary team assessment. They will review concepts related to targeted vs. affective violence, transient and substantive threats, risk and protective/anchor factors for targeted violence, and how BIT/CARE and threat teams operate in law enforcement agencies, schools, colleges, workplaces, and communities.

DPrep Safety brings together a diverse, experienced team of faculty to tackle this course from the perspectives of counseling, law enforcement, conduct, DEI, Title IX, and human resources. We provide an intersectional perspective that draws from the best research and practice in each of these fields. The multidisciplinary approach to threat assessment is a best practice supported by leading governmental organizations and subject-matter experts in the field.

More details on our Preparedness Page.

Gathering information from another party is an important skill set that crosses over a number of fields, including threat assessment, Title IX, case management, conduct/discipline, and law enforcement/campus safety. This course is meant as an advanced track, moving the conversation beyond the interviewing and intake skills outlined in our BIT/CARE trainings. Our team teaches from decades of experience with an intersectional focus on counseling, law enforcement, campus safety, student conduct, and legal techniques.

More details at Threat Page. 

This course is designed for those who have completed previous threat assessment courses and have a working knowledge of the modes of violence, types of threats, and have a rubric or system they are able to use when assessing risk and threat. We will share advanced concepts related to social media threat assessments, involuntarily celibates (incel), the growing risk of white supremacist violence, report writing, and threat mitigation planning. 

More details at Threat Page. 

Large-scale emergency incidents and disasters can occur anywhere. When they do, being prepared in advance is one of the most important factors in a successful response. This workshop will provide the tools to enable administrators, students, faculty, and staff to manage a wide variety of emergency situations.

DPrep Safety offers a Community Advocacy and Support Team (CAST) training program to support housing professionals as they address a range of issues, including frustrations with housing shortages, tenant-landlord disputes, violence and threats, and the mental health needs of residents in public housing. This course should be attended by housing authority staff who interact with tenants, as well as those in supervisory roles within property management.

The CAST model focuses on the collaborative, multi-disciplinary process of identifying and mitigating risk in a culturally competent, timely, and effective manner. Building on direct feedback from housing authority directors and staff, this course provides a consistent approach for managing and documenting a clear process to address community needs. The training provides access to Pathways and DarkFox (DPrep’s behavioral intervention expert systems) to analyze risk and mitigate bias in decision-making through a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens.

Drawing on Dr. Brian Van Brunt’s work in his books A Faculty Guide to Disruptive and Dangerous Behavior and A Staff Guide to Addressing Disruptive and Dangerous Behavior on Campus, this training will explore the difference between disruptive and dangerous behavior in and outside the classroom. The training will cover how to de-escalate a crisis when it occurs and the importance of sharing this information forward with your BIT/CARE team.

We offer a blended training model with Dr. Brian Van Brunt to train your residential life staff in key crisis de-escalation and working with residents with mental illness.

The training series includes:

• An on-site training day that would address the topics listed below in 75-minute segments throughout the day.

• Access for all RA/RDs to five of the RA/RD courses listed on the Training Outpost website to be completed during the fall semester. Completion updates and a final report would be provided to the administrator.

• One 75-minute Zoom training from the DPrep team (topic TBD based on your institution’s needs).

More details on our Residential Life Page. 

The central outcome of BIT/CARE and threat work is mitigating the risk through interventions, referrals, and connections to community-based support services. These interventions are the responsibility of everyone on the team, although some members may work more directly with students and/or community members. There have also been increasing numbers of schools, colleges/universities, housing agencies, and workplaces investing in case management and social workers to coordinate intervention services.

The skills needed to carry out this work include conducting an intake meeting, creating timely documentation,  and developing a risk mitigation plan that considers the individual’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, mental illness, physical disability, and religious and political beliefs. While many staff and team members provide these support services informally, based on their history of positive interactions with individuals, a formalized structure with defensible documentation is important for all interventions. By coordinating these services through the BIT/CARE team, we can better ensure that the support offered is aligned with the level of risk, equitable and inclusive, capable of driving change, and grounded in research and literature.

This course is ideal for BIT/CARE team members, law enforcement, resident directors, academic and career counselors, case managers, and orientation leaders to review the key factors in developing effective interventions.

More details on our BIT/CARE Page.

Knowing how to navigate and manage high-stakes communication at news conferences, during emotional conversations with community members, during hiring and firing meetings, when discussing performance improvement plans, and within the departmental chain of command is essential for those asked to speak for the department to third parties. It is essential to have a strategy for communicating effectively, avoiding errors, and managing ‘hot spots’ that addresses third-party concerns while maintaining the department's integrity and goals.

This course lays the groundwork for organizations to respond effectively to crises or significant events. While communication in daily situations is important, it is critical to distinguish daily communication practices from a crisis communication strategy. When done well, communication can build and sustain trust and effectively demonstrate transparency and authenticity.

More details on our Preparedness Page. 

This course training helps participants navigate the challenges presented by faculty and other community members and learn how to talk with faculty, staff, parents, students, and the general community about threats (while staying within the limits of information privacy).

This workshop focuses on learning terminology related to gender identity and exploring other perspectives and worldviews on gender. Whether you are new to these ideas or want to learn more, we have a place for you in our classes. This training is not about shame, blame, forced change, demanded acceptance, or agreement. Our workshops have been designed to foster engagement and promote connection, belonging, and safety for all groups of people.

Learn more at genderexpression.info

DPrep Safety’s Mindset Active Assailant Training blends leading research from psychology, law enforcement, and military theory with our instructors’ practice and experience to emphasize early preparation before an attack. Through a trauma-informed approach to instructional design, we train teachers, administrators, and other employees to enhance their awareness of their surroundings. This awareness improves response time and empowers community members to act rather than freeze in fear or indecision. The Mindset program helps participants choose the best course of action, increasing the likelihood of survival.

More details on our Preparedness Page.

We all have biases. Bias shapes how we see the world and how we choose to interact with others. The goal of this workshop is to better understand and mitigate bias in our processes, not to remove it. This training provides an opportunity to explore how each of us sees the world and widens the aperture of awareness when working with others through assessment, crisis de-escalation, and interventions. This workshop emphasizes the importance of improving the accuracy and validity of our processes across the three critical areas of gathering information, making decisions, and developing interventions.

More details on our Preparedness Page.

What’s Involved. DPrep is excited to offer a three-part series on Practical Leadership Skills in Residential Life. Each 90-minute course is aimed at residential life hall directors, training, and orientation staff to ensure they have quality access to the latest research, guidance, and advice from our subject matter experts.

Why It is Needed. After listening to several of our community partners, we confirmed that many schools across the country are facing experienced staff shortages in resident director positions. This means hiring staff with less experience, often with bachelor’s rather than master’s degrees, and placing increasing demands on their leadership skills in management, supervision, crisis counseling, mental illness awareness, and administrative and educational programming.

Part I: Building the Toolkit

Our presenters review the importance of the residential life program and how it is vital, now more than ever, for student retention, academic progress, social growth, support for mental and physical disabilities, crisis de-escalation, student conduct, BIT/CARE referrals, supervision, RA development, documentation, and community building. Few positions on campus have such a wide and deep set of job duties, and this session offers practical advice and guidance on how to balance these responsibilities, grow a team, and ensure your own mental and physical health stays on track.

• An overview of the full range of responsibilities that residential life leadership staff must undertake

• The importance of being prepared before the skills are needed (referrals, forms, documentation)

• Keeping your cool: A practical guide to crisis de-escalation skills

• Working with community partners

• Understanding stress reactions and burnout prevention from the start

Part II: Building Community and Supervising the Staff

Building a community is no easy task. We will discuss how building a community for your resident advisors becomes a parallel process for helping them build their own community. Drawing from Fitch and Van Brunt’s book Leading Across Generations, the presenters share with you some practice advice about building a community and how to set up supervision with your staff in a way that works.

• Importance of community building

• Themed housing, counselor-in-residence

• From throwing FISH! and moving cheese

• Myers-Briggs and Gallup StrengthsFinder

• Choosing your approach to supervision

Part III: Building Readiness to Respond to Supervision Challenges

There is a saying: every ship at the bottom of the ocean had a map. Sometimes, the best laid plans don’t go as planned. We will review how to approach seven difficult scenarios that come up for resident directors and residential life leadership staff. The presenters draw on concepts introduced in previous courses to discuss the importance of addressing problems early and often, what is required for good documentation, and ten common RA challenges.

• Early addressing of behavior and consistent meetings

• Identifying common RA problems: overachieving/committed, need for constant praise, checked out of the job, home problems impacting work performance, argumentative and contrary, lacking inertia and initiative, strong start/bad follow-through, boundary problems, and overzealous rule enforcement.

• Developing performance improvement plans

• Having hard conversations and termination

• Clear documentation

More details on our Residential Life Page. 

Attending to potential safety and security concerns in the community and schools is the best way to get out ahead of violence, crime, assault, threats, and danger. This practical and engaging workshop brings the principles of situational awareness into the hands of student leadership and residential life staff. This program teaches life skills that are applicable to college and beyond. 

Some practical examples include:

• Staying safe online and with cash apps

• Being aware at parties and knowing the risks

• Understanding the signs of threat and dangerousness

• Safety concerns at gas stations, in the residence halls, in rural settings, in parking lots, and at night

DPrep Safety works with schools, workplaces, colleges, and universities that want to put their teams through a tailored experience involving a number of cases to earn a threat assessment certification. Cases are developed within a general topic (e.g., mental illness, low-level threat, outsider threat, relationship violence) and are tailored for the specific team working the case. For example, if the community is a workplace, the threat will demonstrate a workplace scenario. If the location is a middle school or a community, non-residential college, then that will be included in the case details.

Certification is offered through a process wherein the team is given a case with two weeks' lead time to create a triage assessment of risk, score the case with a VRA process (e.g., HCR-20, Darkfox, SIVRA-35, WAVR-21, MOSAIC, etc.), and generate a final threat report including mitigation planning that will be submitted to our subject matter experts. The case will be scored on a rubric and discussed during the 90-minute Zoom discussion.

More details at Threat Page. 

Required by California’s SB553 and recommended for all workplaces, these plans identify and mitigate potential risk factors for violence and include procedures for responding to violence and potential violence. DPrep Safety offers templates and can work with you to tailor them to your site’s needs. We also offer comprehensive site walkthroughs and can train your staff on how to prepare for and respond to potential violence.