Team composition Best practices
"The type of co-responder also varies across jurisdictions and may include a psychologist, psychiatric nurse, or licensed clinical social worker. A common choice is a mental health professional with a Master’s degree. These Master’s-level clinicians have significant clinical experience and are perceived as better equipped to accurately assess risk and determine course of action. In addition, such clinicians are accountable to a licensing board, which could be used as a “counter balance to any pressure they experience to deliver services in a manner that is expedient to law enforcement.” Source
"Generally, community responder teams consist of two to four people per team based upon the community’s needs and available resources. Two-person teams can employ responders who respectively specialize in mental health/substance use and medical care, allowing the pair to address both medical and psychiatric needs of residents. However, there are teams that employ two harm reduction specialists or community members. Three- or four-person teams at times take on a multidisciplinary approach and incorporate multiple professions, such as mental health specialists, emergency medical technicians, and peer-support specialists." Source
"an effective CR would be an individual with a background as paramedic, a clinician, or a crisis intervention specialist. CRs should also include peer navigators, who have personally experienced the challenges facing people involved in these 911 calls and can provide valuable perspectives to outreach teams." Source
"Mobile crisis teams (MCTs). An MCT is a team of mental health professionals—commonly a social worker and a nurse—available to respond to mental/behavioral health crisis situations in the community. Goals include reducing unnecessary hospital transports and connecting people to community-based mental health services and supports. As with the co-responder model, some communities have incorporated peer specialists or peer advocates into their system along with clinicians." Source
"These 2 programs typically involve a specially trained team, including at least one police officer and one mental health professional, that jointly respond to CFS in which behavioral health crises are suspected to be involved. When responding to these CFS, co-responder teams seek to safely engage, assess, and direct individuals in crisis to appropriate behavioral health and social services" Source
"Anyone considering starting a similar program should think about where their program would best reside first. For us, we believed it made the most sense embedded in the police department, but each jurisdiction should make this assessment for themselves. One way to make this determination is to seek public and ongoing feedback from elected officials, law enforcement officers, and the community to determine how community responders can address the community’s needs. It will also be important to pay attention to things like available physical space, size of the law enforcement agency, desired hours of operation, and other key factors like allowances for unionization of employees. Additionally, jurisdictions should develop plans for securing appropriate vehicles for community responder staff based on the types of calls they will be addressing." - Anne Larson, Outreach Services Coordinator for CRU Olympia Source
