Thunder Bay police, CMHA launch expansion of mobile crisis response program

Thunder Bay police and the local Canadian Mental Health Association branch are expanding upon a partnership to respond to mental health crisis calls in the community.

On Tuesday, representatives with the Thunder Bay Police Service, Canadian Mental Health Association branch in Thunder Bay and the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre announced details of a new program that will expand upon the existing joint mobile crisis response team.

The Integrated Mobile Police Assessment Crisis Team (IMPACT), which launched on Jan. 4, will feature a police officer paired with a crisis worker based at the police station to respond to mental health calls for service to police for 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

The joint mobile crisis response team, which has been in place for nearly three years, has workers sent from the mental health association's headquarters to join police officers at the scene of calls. That two-person team will continue to operate.

Jennifer Hyslop, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Mental Health branch in Thunder Bay, described the IMPACT project as the next logical step for the partnership.

"We designed the IMPACT team to be able to respond more quickly and swiftly and hopefully demonstrate that this model of care is even more critical than the way we were running our joint mobile project before," Hsylop said.

Since launching in June 2018 with funding from the North West Local Health Integration Network, the crisis response team reached over 1,800 people. In three weeks, the IMPACT program had encounters with 71 people, diverting 33 of those from going to the hospital.

The goal of the programs is to direct people experiencing mental health crises to the most appropriate services, which can mean referrals to community-based supports, diversion from the hospital emergency department or reducing the amount of time spent waiting in the emergency department, said Thunder Bay police Insp. Derek West, who heads their community services branch.

"It's better service and support and intervention at the right time, right place and by the right service," West said.

A future diversion option will be admission to the mental health association's new unit of five safe beds, which are expected to be operational by the end of February.

24-hour coverage

The new IMPACT program will operate 24 hours per day, whereas the joint mobile response team covers a period from 2 p.m. until 2 a.m.

Hyslop said having the team available only 12 hours per day presented a significant barrier.

"There was a high percentage of calls that the joint mobile team was not able to respond to because they were already out on a call or it was outside of their working hours," Hyslop said.

"[That] was probably over 40 per cent of the time, so that was the other impetus to really explore an [IMPACT] model, of a true ride-along model, to ensure there was more opportunity for coverage in the community and not leaving police to have to deal with mental health calls on their own."

The IMPACT program, once fully staffed, will have four full-time crisis response workers and two in a part-time capacity. They will be paired with uniformed patrol officers who have been specially trained.

Lisa Beck, the hospital's director of trauma, the emergency department and critical care, said the new model has already shown to be a great improvement.

"The crisis worker and the officer are actually responding together, arriving in unison with the patient in the emergency department," Beck said.

"In the past, with the joint mobile crisis team, there were many instances of where the crisis worker arrived separately from the officer. Collectively, they arrive together and support the individual while in the emergency department."

The IMPACT model is expected to run for the next year and then will be analyzed to determine the future of the program and joint mobile crisis response team.