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Mental health program pairs Jacksonville officer with clinician

Florida Times-Union - 7/12/2020

A new program pairs a Jacksonville police officer with a state-certified mental health clinician for emotionally charged situations involving mental illness or substance use to find ways to get individuals into counseling instead of jail.

The officer/clinician field program is only the third of its kind in Florida, designed to build a relationship with those people to get them help instead of sending them again and again through the criminal justice system or into an emergency room.

Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Director Mike Bruno said the pilot program showed lots of promise when it began this year. The coronavirus pandemic short-circuited it in mid-March, but when it hopefully resumes in a few months, he said it could even save lives.

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"This is not just a knee-jerk something we have done of late," Bruno said. "Mental health calls are extremely complex because you never know ... where they are at mentally or what they are willing to, or wanting to do. And in those calls, the officers many times are reactive to the situation. We hope having a clinician in the field, and hopefully two or three teams before it's over, that we can have a greater impact."

The program is funded by the Jacksonville-based LSF Health Systems, which manages behavioral health care for people facing poverty in a 23-county region in Northeast and North Central Florida. It was established about two years ago in the Gainesville Police Department and showed results there, LSF CEO Christine Cauffield said. The Alachua County Sheriff's Office also started a program this year.

In its short time on the road in Jacksonville, Cauffield said the team has been able to use clinical skills to develop a rapport with people, then divert them into programs.

"They [officers] report they are very grateful to have that trained professional ride along and be able to work as partners to de-escalate situations and see very positive outcomes," Cauffield said. "... When all of the individuals involved can see positive outcomes as a result of the co-responder program, it's really a win-win for everyone."

The program teams a crisis intervention-trained police officer with a certified mental health clinician in marked police cars. They respond to calls from those identified as "high utilizers" of crisis stabilization programs, emergency rooms and jail, Cauffield said. They provide immediate on-scene support, counseling and early trauma intervention, make referrals for counseling and offer follow-up services to "maintain stability."

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams learned about Gainesville's program, then he and Bruno met in early fall of 2019 with them and the Florida Department of Children and Families to learn more.

Jacksonville's officers normally get crisis intervention training, as well as supplemental mental health first aid courses, Bruno said. This mental health clinician program is a "progression" of those services. Now his team helps people on the street who run the spectrum from armed and possibly suicidal, even homicidal, to someone depressed due to the "times that have befallen them," Bruno said.

"They are normally healthy, but because of a loss of job or some circumstances in their personal life are just really depressed, and they need that support and don't know where to get it from," Bruno said. "So we provide that to them. Then there are the chronic cases of mental health issues to where the officer really is throwing them a life preserver to make a difference."

The team didn't have much time on the streets before the clinician had to stop due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Bruno said they saw "potential benefits," such as helping a man whose neighbors said was becoming more aggressive, getting him stabilized and getting his out-of-state family to pick up that care.

"There's a lot of things we have done" Bruno said. "We got housing assistance for vets to get them off the street. The program is still young, but the returns are just very promising."

The Sheriff's Office is applying for a U.S. Department of Justice grant to add two to three more teams.

Gainesville Police Department data from its co-responder team in its first eight months in mid- to late 2018 showed the pair answered 434 service calls to people with mental health issues, The Gainesville Sun said. They had 402 contacts on those calls, with 86 repeat visits and 265 follow-ups. They committed 37 people for involuntary evaluation under the Baker Act and got another 39 voluntarily evaluated.

Data also showed that by diverting about 92 percent of those dealt with from jail, the program saved an estimated $220,270, the Police Department said.

"It was wildly successful," Cauffield said. "... It's truly life-saving for the individual and their families. It is also a huge cost saving to those expensive services that possibly could have been utilized had this individual not been diverted. I am talking about crisis stabilization units, jails and emergency rooms."

Dan Scanlan: (904) 359-4549

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