Banking on KC – Dennis Meier & Kaki Conti of Synergy Services
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode are Dennis Meier and Kaki Conti of Synergy Services. Dennis is the Co-Executive Director and Kaki is the Vice President of Development. Welcome to you both.
Dennis Meier:
Thank you.
Kaki Conti:
Thanks for having us.
Kelly Scanlon:
So, Synergy Services has been around for decades. It started in 1970, it was a shelter for runaways, homeless youth, but over the years you've merged with other organizations and you've expanded your mission. Tell us about what those mergers have contributed to that expansion and what Synergy has become.
Dennis Meier:
So Synergy started as a youth-serving agency on Park University Campus, by the way, and they're still our partners in many ways. We still have our administrative office and a counseling center there. Somewhere in 1997, '98, we decided to merge with an agency named Safe Haven, and then in 2000 we merged with another two agencies and both were focused on prevention and so that gave us a continuum to work with. Where Synergy historically worked with youth, children and youth and had provided some programming expanding like clinical services and transitional living and so forth, when we merged with Safe Haven in particular, that really gave us much larger breadth to begin focusing on the various types of family violence, not just child abuse or not just domestic violence, or not just runaway homeless youth, but that continuum. And so today it's morphed into crisis intervention, which has always been a core of Synergy's work to emergency shelter.
And then we now have transitional housing and school-based programming, but all of it's connected and we call it Synergy for a good reason. With that synergistic merging of resources, we've been able to provide services for a much larger population in the community and for more members of the family, and that's really a central piece of it. With each year as we've evolved, we have gained a deeper understanding that a systemic approach, that when one aspect of the family is in trouble or has challenges that other parts of the family then also start having issues and problems. And so we've always tried to take that approach of can we provide services to the whole family, to all members, not just one and then have to refer them out of, and sometimes we still have to, but we try not to.
Kelly Scanlon:
Right. These things don't occur in isolation.
Dennis Meier:
Correct.
Kelly Scanlon:
Typically, they impact other family members and ultimately the community. Talk to us about the prevalence of domestic abuse.
Dennis Meier:
The two, I would say primary populations that we serve are child abuse incidences or occurrences of child abuse and domestic violence. And obviously they're connected, in 30 to 60% of the cases where we see one, we also see the other. Unfortunately, Missouri is the third-highest state in the union in terms of reporting of incidences of domestic violence. I think in 2018 or 2019, the stats were that there were roughly 50,000 incidences of domestic violence reported in the state of Missouri alone.
Kelly Scanlon:
And those are the ones that are reported?
Dennis Meier:
That's reported, that's correct. We at Synergy typically receive around 2,500 to 3000 calls a year from victims or survivors trying to find shelter or crisis intervention therapy or help for their kids. We coordinate with all the other domestic violence shelters in the Kansas City community. In fact, one of the nice parts about the Kansas City response to domestic violence is that all of the agencies seem to really play well together and share information and coordinate. But despite that, we still turn away roughly 1500 folks a year requests for services for shelter beds that we simply don't have the capacity for.
Kelly Scanlon:
Synergy does or over overall?
Dennis Meier:
Synergy alone.
Kelly Scanlon:
Synergy alone does that.
Dennis Meier:
Yeah.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay. What are some of the myths about domestic abuse that you've seen over, I know you have been working with Synergy now for nearly 40 years, Dennis, what are some of the myths that you see?
Dennis Meier:
Well, I think one of the myths is that it can be started by anybody. That the one party is as responsible as the other. And the fact is that domestic violence is not one incident. Domestic violence is not a spat or an argument. Rather, it's a campaign, an ongoing campaign to control and to use power over someone else. And so it's pretty well established in the research that abusers, and this is another myth, that abusers just have anger control issues or there's an episodic outburst of some kind.
Kelly Scanlon:
And if they could just control that anger.
Dennis Meier:
If they could just control or learn some emotional management kinds of things, then they'd be okay. The fact is that abusers select often who they abuse and how long they abuse, and they're rather strategic about it. They can be very engaging and look like the model partner early in the relationship or in the courtship. And I think that's what's confusing or confounding to a lot of, particularly women who obviously is not so isolated just gender wise, however, oftentimes women and children are the recipients of this abuse or violence.
But I think that's a part of what's so surprising to them is that, "Well, this is such a nice guy when I started to know him and now he's become this monstrous power and control guy who's kept me from my own family members or has kept me from making my own decisions and threatened me." There's a myth out there that says, "Surely this nice guy can't be responsible for this terrible behavior." And the truth is that the terrible behavior occurs because oftentimes it's rather private and secretive. And so that's a part of what keeps it going is that folks then don't know what's going on and then don't want to intervene.
Kelly Scanlon:
There's psychological abuse, there's manipulation going on in addition to any physical abuse that might occur.
Kaki Conti:
I also want to add that a common misperception is that it doesn't happen near me happening. It knows no racial lines, it knows no socioeconomic lines. It happens in all areas of Kansas City, and oftentimes those people who might be able to help don't even realize that it's happening right next door. It's very eye-opening for people to realize that, but it's unfortunately quite true.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, along that line then, if you suspect something's going on, I know teachers in the classroom, doctors and nurses, they watch for these kinds of signs, but if I am a neighbor, what are the kinds of things that perhaps I could do or is it so private that you just generally don't know about it?
Dennis Meier:
Well, at the core of almost every intervention for not just domestic violence, but other kinds of abuse as well, is safety. The ability to plan for safety and the ability to know who to reach out to and provide the key information to ask for help and to get to a safe place. That's the 101 of all of our shelters or crisis work. Secondly, I think it's to understand the public safety resources in the community, to understand that there are police, there are folks in the community who really do want to help and know how to help in ways that keep other members of the family safe. I've been at Synergy for nearly 40 years. I've seen pastors and churches and other people try to help because they get the information first.
Kaki Conti:
I think to that, if neighbors recognize or if pastors, they can go to our website at synergyservices.org. We do have a way to help people make a safe plan, and there's always a quick exit button so that if you don't want people to see you on the website, they can back out of it super-fast and they won't know that they're doing the homework. But there is a way for us to help them make those plans should that time arise when they feel that they need to leave.
Kelly Scanlon:
How does Synergy respond to what you just described? What are some of the other ways that your organization responds to these?
Dennis Meier:
Well, we have two hotline numbers, a domestic violence hotline number and a runaway homeless youth number. And those two hotline numbers are staffed by people trained to take those calls and to know how to steer direct and coach or guide people to where they need. Secondly, a lot of our work is focused on managing the crisis. And so we have a street outreach team, for example, that works with homeless youth who are sometimes afraid to go anyway. If you're a youth and you're on the street more than 72 hours, you'll probably be approached by someone who is willing to say they'll help you, but in the most high-risk or dangerous way. And so trading for drugs or sex or those kinds of things.
And so unfortunately, those populations don't often know that there's a hotline that you can call. And so a part of what Kaki and her team do from the marketing and the donor development, community development is to get the word out so that we essentially have people who want to ask for help, which in and of itself is a real challenge, right? To have the courage and the skill to some extent, to know who to reach out to. That's a big deal and it's the first step. When kids reach out, they often have a lot of raw resiliency, and what we try to do is then help them stabilize those resources so that they can in fact use what their skill and talent and knowledge and so forth is to be successful.
Kelly Scanlon:
How many youth have you served in your program?
Dennis Meier:
Just at the shelter alone, we serve on average two to 300 youth per year. It's a license for a 20-bed facility, but we typically don't have all the beds full. But anyway, if we serve even at an average of 200 per year, we've served over 11,000 kids since we've opened. I'm proud to say that's a very, very positive impact on a community, and we've just been so lucky to have a community that embraces that mission and has set aside resources to make sure we can help.
Kelly Scanlon:
Speaking of that mission, what are some of the other programs that you offer besides the hotline?
Dennis Meier:
One of the things that we discovered early on is that there's a reason kids run away from home. In the first year or so, I started looking at what's the underlying cause and unfortunately, child abuse is often the underlying cause, and child sexual abuse was one of the things that I began looking at very early on in my career, trying to draw the line between runaway behavior and the type of abuse that they would report when they came to us. It so happened that about 10 years after I started, there was a judge in Atlanta that in fact took notice of the under-reporting of certain types of abuse and started saying, "We've got to figure out how to interview kids differently," so that the child tells the story one time, it doesn't have to go to teachers and friends and police.
Kelly Scanlon:
Relive the trauma over and over again.
Dennis Meier:
Each time the story changes just enough so that it makes it harder and harder to prosecute that case. So that sparked a movement across the country, child advocacy movement. And right now in Missouri, I think there are 16 or 17 centers, and the national goal is to have a center like that, that is less than a hundred miles from almost any child in the country so that any child who needs to report abuse can. And about 60% of the reports are usually sexual abuse. Synergy has one of those programs. We serve Clay, Platte and Ray County primarily.
Kelly Scanlon:
And what's the name of the program?
Dennis Meier:
It's called Synergy Child Advocacy Center. Jackson County has a child protective center. There are different counties, each has a program, but it's coordinated by Missouri KidsFirst. And we have consistently over the last 10 years provided anywhere between 300 and 300 interviews per year. And so those cases, they get the attention of the child protection agencies and the juvenile office and prosecuting attorneys and those folks in the community that try to hold folks accountable and to then provide the therapy necessary to heal from those kinds of abuse.
Kaki Conti:
I have to add some of the additional services, just super quick. We have ongoing mental and emotional clinical services. We have physical clinics as well, so people can go in for eye exams, get free eyeglasses, dental exams, and full healthcare. And that is also at our youth campus. So kiddos can come in and get care for as long as they need through those clinics.
Kelly Scanlon:
So you really have a very, as you mentioned earlier, a holistic approach, 360 approach. You also brought up trauma. Whether, you're a child, whether you're an adult, so often the trauma that's associated with family violence doesn't just dissipate as soon as the person is removed from the situation, it continues. So what is it that people need in order to heal from trauma?
Dennis Meier:
Well, first it's important to understand what trauma is, and the simplest definition is that it's an event that overwhelms a person's ability to cope. All of us experience or are exposed to one kind of trauma or another. So it's not that you try to prevent people from ever experiencing a traumatic event. It's the dosage really that makes the difference. And if the trauma that you experience recurs, which is often the case in family violence where there's a recurring pattern, the dosage of trauma ends up being what makes the difference. And so what we understand now is that toxic stress that's related to trauma ends up changing the brain and it impacts our ability to learn. It changes your body chemistry, it floods your system with cortisol, which is designed to protect you. But if you stay in that state often enough for so long that that chemistry starts being triggered every day, it really starts changing your ability to manage and cope emotionally and socially.
And so those are the kinds of things that we often consider traumatic, and I won't go into it in a lot of detail, but I've encouraged people to become familiar with the ACES study, and ACES stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. In essence, what they learned from that study is that if you experience one or two, maybe three traumatic events in your life, divorce, child abuse, alcoholism in the family, mental illness and so forth, there doesn't seem to be a huge shift in your behavioral health or mental health. However, when you go past three or four and you start climbing into the five, six, seven, eight range of ACEs experiences, that the impact on your health really changes.
So the incidences of everything from pulmonary heart disease to diabetes to psychiatric issues starts just going through the roof. So what we've tried to do is first of all, understand the connection between things like family violence and trauma. Second, to try to develop treatment approaches to heal trauma most effectively, and that has launched into a whole new science, which is the flip side of healing from trauma, which is resiliency.
Kelly Scanlon:
You've been able to make a positive impact. Can you share some of the stories?
Dennis Meier:
There's an interesting internal project that one of our staff has going, which is she's reached out to members in our community who have been at Synergy perhaps years ago, 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago. She's interviewing these people who have been to Synergy and are saying, "What difference has this made?" And so I just accidentally bumped into one of the members in our community who came to Synergy House actually about a year or so after I was there as a counselor, and so she knew some of the staff that we worked with. This says twenty-five years ago.
And when she began talking about how she got to Synergy, she recounted the detail of what she had at the time that she arrived at Synergy and who was there and what it was like to spend those first couple of nights at Synergy. And then talked about how that changed her life in terms of understanding that there was a place that you could go to and that there were people who were dedicated to her and to say, "Okay, so tell me how we can help you, tell me what happened." Which is often the core of the healing path is that it's not what's wrong with you, which is at the core of being trauma-informed, it's tell me what happened.
Kelly Scanlon:
And a building of trust because that has been so eroded. You talk about the 11,000 that have likely been served. What you can't measure is the forward impact of that. You can talk about those 11,000 youth, but then the way you change their lives and how that broke a cycle and paying it forward generationally, you can't really measure that, but it's there.
Dennis Meier:
Interestingly, there are some folks that have tried to put a dollar value to it. The results of those studies have indicated that the return is roughly 11 to 12 cents to one. For every penny you spend in emergency services or early intervention or prevention services to change that trajectory, you're saving the community roughly 10 to 11, 12 cents. So you begin to do the math, and it's a no-brainer in terms of the return on your investment. What I tell commissioners and representatives and legislators who will listen is that's the smartest investment you can make. There are many other returns that aren't measured in terms of reduction, absenteeism or the ability to be productive and to pay tax and so forth. It's just what you're not having to pay in emergency room visits or in jailing people or community emergency responses.
Kelly Scanlon:
Do you also need volunteer support to carry out your mission?
Kaki Conti:
Definitely. Most definitely.
Kelly Scanlon:
How can our listeners perhaps engage if they're interested?
Kaki Conti:
There's obviously a lot of ways, so obviously there's volunteer hours. If you go to synergyservices.org, there is a way to find out what specifically we could use, volunteers. There's always the opportunity. We keep a running list at different locations and different activities, so that's available year round. Also donating things. When people flee violence, they rarely have what they need with them. So we always have a list on our website where people can bring us new items for people to use when they need comfort on those first few nights when they come to us.
The funds that we receive from donors, critical to how we operate, but receiving the items of care and receiving the time, all balance out what someone can do. And quite frankly, each person that has the opportunity to do these range of activities, they learn more and more what we do, and they also become advocates for us, and they start to spread the word, which is nothing more than beneficial to the entire community. So it's all on our website, of course, and easy to find.
Kelly Scanlon:
Synergyservices.org. If you're so inclined, go out there and give them a call, send an email. There's contact information there as well. So you mentioned that a lot of your funding comes from your donors. Do you have any special events throughout the year that people can attend or support?
Kaki Conti:
We do. In fact, we just had our Stand Up For Synergy, which is where we bring in a national name of comedian. It's held at the Argosy in a nicely intimate setting, but we also have opportunities for people of all ages to join. We have the Kindest Kansas Citian, that's an essay that goes out to kiddos in school districts to nominate through essay who they believe are the Kindest Kansas Citians, and we have an event to celebrate those people. And we have Art Soup coming up, which is a fun way to engage in some of the art therapy work that we do. And then we also have Quiz for a Cause, which is a fun trivia night that will also be coming up later in the summer. So several opportunities to engage throughout the year and usually are a whole lot of fun also. And you learn a lot.
Kelly Scanlon:
It sounds like it takes so many people to make what you do successful and to have the impact that you have talked about. Thank you so much for your time today.
Dennis Meier:
You're so welcome.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Dennis Meier and Kaki Conti for being our guests on this episode of Banking on KC. Investing in programs aimed at eliminating family violence reaps diverse benefits. Primarily, it ensures safety and well-being of individuals. Reduced violence correlates with improved mental and physical health, and it creates a safer environment in which families can thrive. Further, as these programs break the cycle of abuse, they curb long-term social costs, as Dennis mentioned.
Economically, the strain on healthcare, legal systems, and social services diminishes. Likewise, the programs foster individual resiliency, nurturing a generation better equipped to attain their individual goals and contribute positively to society. Ultimately investing in programs that curb family violence, returns measurable social and economic rewards. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.