Brooklyn Center To Expand Response To 911 Mental Health Calls
The city of Brooklyn Center is expanding its social worker response to 911 mental health calls.
The innovative approach to 911 response came as a result of a need to reduce burdens on police and improve access to mental health and social services.
Brooklyn Center rolled out its mental health response team last fall in partnership with Hennepin County. That team responds to calls during daytime hours.
Now, Brooklyn Center will expand its response to high-priority, late-night hours. The city will contract with Canopy Roots, a company that specializes in unarmed mental health 911 calls.
The expanded response starts April 7.
How Mental Health Teams Respond
When calls go into 911, dispatchers filter information and determine the appropriate response.
“911 dispatchers are trained to triage those calls,” said LaToya Turk, the city’s director of Community Prevention, Health and Safety.
A social worker and a paramedic will go out on mental health calls with Brooklyn Center police.
The Hennepin County team deployed last September responds Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., said Turk.
Turk said the city’s contract with Canopy Roots will deploy a mental health team Monday, Thursday and Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 3:30 p.m. to midnight.
“Those are our high-priority call times,” said Turk. “Those are times designated by our crime analysts of when we have an increase of calls for behavior health calls.”
According to Turk, since the city began deploying mental response teams, it has served 152 people. The top reasons for contact were mental health, substance use disorder and homelessness, she said.
Turk said teams are able to provide transportation to hospitals and shelters.
The response teams are 87 percent grant funded, with 13 percent coming from the city’s general fund.
The Hennepin County model costs the city about $89,000 per year, said Turk, with similar costs for the Canopy Roots contract.
Also See: Brooklyn Park Launches Second Alternative Response Team for Mental Health Calls
