A program that is meant to help reduce the amount of time police spend on mental health calls is getting support from the Thunder Bay Police Services Board.
At its monthly board meeting on Tuesday, members voted to send a letter to the provincial government endorsing the Joint Mobile Crisis Response Team and asked for funding to continue the successful program.
The initiative pairs mental health workers with police and allows officers to free up their time so they can continue on to other calls while the mental health worker stays in the hospital’s emergency department with the person in need of help.
A Lakehead University study on the program was presented to the board members showing that police saved $20,500 in reduced emergency department time over six months.
The report also showed that when the program was fully up and running, police saved an average of 40 minutes in the emergency department.
Recommendations included expanding the program so it could help meet the needs for mobile crisis services as the demand for the service exceeds the current program’s capacity.
“This is a very timely topic. The overwhelming nature of mental health needs that are in our community, and how often those are involving the police and how limited the police are in their ability to respond to such events and potentially diffuse and divert these events from the emergency department, is an ongoing challenge that I see every day in our emergency department. And I see that this is certainly a step in the right direction to supporting the needs of our community, reducing the non-police work burden of our police force and also reducing burden on other facilities such as our hospital,” Board member and emergency physician Kyle Lansdell said.
The program started in June of 2018 and operates on part-time hours. The board wants to see permanent funding for the Canada Mental Health Agency so they can operate the program 24/7.
