A new white Ford Expedition is out on Akron streets for the first time this week, carrying a mental health clinician, a paramedic and a cop. They’re part of a new collaborative effort tasked with responding to low-level 911 calls involving mental health concerns.
“Traditionally, these responses were done by just a police officer,” said Acting Police Chief Brian Harding about the thousands of calls that come in every year involving people dealing with mental health-related issues.
“We hope to make a dent in that number,” said Akron Fire Chief Joseph Natko, “and we hope to reduce that number as time goes on and this team creates bridges and just gets folks to a better place, and they’re not simply dialing 911 for help. … It’s a groundbreaking day. It’s an exciting day for our community.”
Harding and Natko spoke during a press conference at Akron’s Fire Station 4, where they were joined by Akron Mayor Shammas Malik, Portage Path Behavioral Health President and CEO Tracy Yaeger, and County of Summit Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board (ADM) Executive Director Aimee Wade.
The group was there to announce the launch of the SCOUT – Summit County Outreach Team – program, a “co-responder model in which crisis-trained members of Akron Fire, Akron Police, and Portage Path Behavioral Health will jointly respond to low acuity calls for service where mental health is a concern, but the individual is not a danger to themselves or others.”
Wade said a gap was identified more than 2 ½ years ago, which was someone to respond when a person was in a mental health crisis.
“Today marks the beginning of this pilot program aimed at de-escalating situations when individuals are experiencing mental health crises,” she said.
The pilot program has, so far, just one unit responding to calls on weekdays from 8 a.m to 4:30 p.m.. The unit will be evaluated, tweaked, and, its members hope, expanded in the future.
“More people than ever are experiencing mental health challenges and using substances,” Yaeger said. “As we enhance our crisis response throughout the county, starting in this city, it is critical that we work together to find new solutions, assist our first responders, and build services that are effective and an efficient use of resources.”
The SCOUT team will be sent by 911 dispatchers to respond to calls “where a person is in need of crisis intervention, a mental health evaluation or assessment, or a linkage to resources including treatment in our community,” Yaeger explained.
“These are low acuity calls. They’re typically not about criminal activity but rather mental health, substance use, or crisis situations,” Yaeger said. “They can best be handled without using force and with a specially trained professional, are less traumatizing to individuals.”
The mental health clinician – Portage Path’s Autumn Goffinet-Focus for this pilot program – will take the lead when responding to calls and attempt to “build rapport with the individual, and then use a variety of de-escalation techniques to make sure the clients are being served using the least restrictive approaches,” Yaeger said.
“The clinician can provide immediate counseling, critical linkages, and general support. If needed, the team can transport the person to psychiatric emergency services or other necessary locations to ensure the safety of the individual. All of this combined leads to better outcomes and, when possible, avoids and reduces hospitalizations and incarceration.”
The police officer – the APD’s Lou Petit – will be there, Harding said, “to provide safety. Safety for the team, safety for the community, and the person that we’re dealing with, and really to step back at that point and allow the clinicians to do what they do best.”
The SCOUT unit will not respond to calls where the individual is a danger to themselves or others, the press release states. Those incidents will still be handled by APD officers.
“If we’re sending this team to calls where there is a safety concern at the outset, then we are sending them to the wrong calls,” Malik explained.
“This is not a thing that is going to solve the issues that we have,” he said. “This is a new tool that we’re testing out in the tool kit. And if it is successful, which we believe it will be, we’ve seen in other communities it is, then I think we’d all like to expand it…. It’s one vehicle, it’s one team, this is not something we’re ready to scale.”
