The Winnebago Comprehensive Healthcare System, drawing expertise from both its Divisions, the Winnebago Public Health Department (WPHD) and Twelve Clans Unity Hospital (TCUH), will work collaboratively with the Winnebago Police Department (WPD) to form a Community Crisis Response (CCR) Team to respond to all emergency calls involving mental and/or behavioral health issues in an effort to divert law enforcement intervention and involvement whenever possible.
Police dispatchers will be trained to quickly assess when CCR Team response is warranted. The CCR Team may be the only alerted responders; be called in tandem with WPD; or be called by WPD once officers are on the scene. Dispatchers and officers will both gain a heightened awareness of the benefits of utilizing the CCR team as CCR Team members’ consistent approach to both mobile crisis unit first response and respectful follow-through weave Tribal values and indigenous cultural sensitivity into their health-based approach.
A CCR Coordinator will facilitate the cooperation necessary to make the Community Crisis Response a success by convening a CCR Task Force comprising Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska stakeholders, which also comprises the population to be served. Over 1,750 enrolled Winnebago Tribal members live on the Tribe’s Reservation; many of its approximately 5,500 total enrolled members often travel home, increasing the population in potential need of the clinical support the CCR Team can provide.
There will be many instances where CCR intervention will be appropriate. Suicide ideation, altered mental status, and alcohol and substance abuse issues are consistently among the top five reasons people present (voluntarily or involuntarily) at the Twelve Clans Emergency Department. Treating people as patients, not jailing them as prisoners will get patients the support they need, will relieve police burden of dealing with health issues, and will address community needs with cultural sensitivity.
The CCR Team will deploy WPHD Mental Health Therapists to join Emergency Medical Services personnel at the scene. Once the immediate crisis is stabilized, a CCR Case Manager can begin working with the resident, even if the patient is incarcerated, to develop a series of safety net supports to help the patient prevent future crises calls.
The CCR Task Force will work to achieve success in its immediate, measurable goals: a) law enforcement intervention, as percentage of Winnebago emergency response outcomes involving mental health issues where no laws have been broken, to decrease by 5% in Year 1; b) medical services are integrated into Winnebago community mobile crisis response in 25% of response calls in Year 1 when felony charges are not involved; and c) increased capacity of mobile crisis response teams; increased collaboration to improve crisis stabilization for all ages; and improved equity in continuity of care and post-crisis follow-up.
The CCR Task Force will develop protocols that identify how to safely and securely help “perpetrators become patients” (i.e., divert law enforcement intervention when it’s unnecessary and when mental health interventions are more appropriately called for).
The Winnebago Community Crisis Response Team and its wrap-around therapeutic supports create a pathway to stop the cycle of emergency calls; law enforcement interventions; increasingly long criminal records; subsequent inability to become gainfully employed; and possible family and community estrangement. A crisis can become a temporary state; the Winnebago Community Crisis Response Team helps provide tools to stop the immediate crisis from becoming a permanent one.