Wellbeing Series: Safe to Serve | Course 4: What Protects Us

A resource may be available without being usable. Time away requires coverage. Protected preparation time can disappear under repeated interruptions. An offer of support may have little effect if people lack the authority, relationships, or working conditions needed to use it.

What Protects Us helps participants determine what would meaningfully support someone under the actual demands of prosecutorial work. Using evidence about human performance and developing prosecution scenarios, participants consider recovery, connection, belonging, agency, psychological safety, and organizational resources. They weigh imperfect options, identify barriers, and decide who can make a proposed support possible. The course then asks how to determine whether the change helped.

What You Will Do in This Program

• Connect a specific professional demand with resources or conditions that may help address it.
• Assess protective factors and resource gaps in realistic prosecution scenarios.
• Compare possible supports and explain the tradeoffs between them.
• Identify what must change for a resource to be accessible and usable.
• Distinguish individual choices from changes requiring supervisory or organizational action.
• Set a review point and consider effects on deadlines, workload, and other people.