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Police strengthen mental health response through collaboration; clinician to join team

Santa Maria Times - 6/24/2021

Jun. 24—As a crisis intervention officer with the Santa Maria Police Department, Max Shaffer is the only member of the force fully dedicated to mental health response and services,

In the near future, however, he will be joined by a clinician from the Santa Barbara County Behavioral Wellness Department to form a co-response team, as part of the department's ongoing goal to bolster mental health services.

This will be the fifth co-response team in the county between law enforcement and Behavioral Wellness, with three teams in the Sheriff's Office and another in the Santa Barbara Police Department.

According to Shaffer, who has been in the crisis intervention role since September, the goal of the team is to provide comprehensive care and follow-up services to residents dealing with mental illness in an attempt to avoid jail or hospitalization.

Since January, the Santa Maria Police Department has received approximately 238 calls initially identified as mental health-related, and Shaffer himself has responded to 197 calls.

"It's becoming more evident that there's a real need for it. Once Santa Barbara adopted it, [we] were like, 'We really need to look into that,'" Shaffer said. "Whether it be natural mental illness or something drug-related, it's evident that jail isn't always the solution. We can prevent a lot of problems before it becomes a problem."

Having teams trained in recognizing signs of a mental health crisis and connecting individuals to resources has resulted in better law enforcement relationships in the community as well as decreased psychiatric hospitalizations, according to Behavioral Wellness Chief Quality Care and Strategy Officer Suzanne Grimmesey.

"It's an incredible pairing," she said. "The team will be dedicated and paired together during a full 40-hour week, so it's very much a collaborative process."

In the process of finalizing a memorandum with Behavioral Wellness, the Police Department also has been allocated $92,000 in additional budget funds to purchase a new, unmarked vehicle specifically for mental health response, Chief Marc Schneider said.

"Ideally they want to do that with an unmarked vehicle so that when the officer and clinician respond out to someone in mental health crisis they can do so in the most nonthreatening way possible," Schneider told the Santa Maria City Council last week.

Along with helping to respond to crisis situations, such as an individual with mental illness who is endangering themselves or others, the crisis intervention officer must maintain connections with residents who have been the subject of calls in the past.

This can involve connecting people to resources, driving them to appointments, checking in with their family members and even reminding people to take their medication, Shaffer said.

"It's also a way to contact people who aren't in crisis. Follow-up is a big one," he said. "Over the last year it's been that, building rapport with people."

In his role, Shaffer has undergone extensive training with the Sheriff's Office related to identifying signs and different kinds of mental illness, de-escalation and identifying triggers, all of which are crucial to the role.

However, the additional expertise of a trained clinician can improve these services even further, Grimmesey said.

"Sometimes a situation to someone who doesn't have a mental health background wouldn't jump out to someone as evidence of a mental health crisis," she said. "If it's responded to that way, you can avoid taking them into custody and get them the services they need."

If the police officer must leave the scene, the partnership also allows the clinician to remain with the individual and continue providing services.

As he waits for the finalization of the memorandum and the arrival of his new partner, Shaffer will keep maintaining community connections and meeting people where they are at.

"That's really the purpose of the position — to prevent these issues from happening, to get to know the people, and to keep it from getting to point of crisis, and if it does, then it's a familiar face," he said.

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