Nearly a year after launching, the Summit County Outreach Team has responded to 800 mental health calls, and officials are looking to expand the co-responder model this year.
"The highest number of those calls are what we've categorized as a psychiatric issue," Dr. Doug Smith, Medical Director at the County of Summit Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board, said. "Could be abnormal behavior. Might be suicidal thoughts or an attempt."
The ADM Board is one of the partners in the SCOUT program, along with Akron and Portage Path Behavioral Health.
Since March, the team of paramedics, police officers and behavioral health specialists has been responding to calls in Akron where mental health is a concern, but the person is not a danger to themselves or others.
“They also do a lot of welfare check type calls," Smith said.
Other cities in Northeast Ohio have also adopted co-responder models in response to the growing number of mental health calls, according to local officials. Cleveland launched the Care Response pilot program last fall in two zip codes, which sends a trained mental health professional and a peer to 988 calls, according to the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Cuyahoga County. Shaker Heights' First Crisis Assistance and Local Linkage mental health response program, which embeds a social worker with police and fire departments, expanded to Cleveland Heights, University Heights, Richmond Heights and South Euclid last year, according to Shaker Heights.
SCOUT has been able to take pressure off Akron’s police and fire departments, which were the only line of defense for these mental health calls, Smith said. Instead of jail or hospitalization, which were some of the only options before SCOUT launched, the team works to deescalate the situation, he said.
"How do you calm the situation and the person so that you can make better decisions around number one, avoiding hospitalization, which they do extremely well, avoiding jail - they don't do that at all," Smith said. "So that's good, so we are able to avoid needless jail for individuals where it's really a mental health or a substance issue."
And SCOUT’s help doesn’t end when they leave a call, he said.
“They will do follow up calls," Smith said, "so they’ll go back and check on the person a couple days after the fact.”
Originally, there were concerns from the community about police officers being on the team, he said.
“That has been a positive, certainly not a negative. The concern was oh they see a uniform, is it an alternative response?," Smith said. "It turns out, it is an alternative response. The citizens, the families, as far as I’ve heard now nobody has been turned off by that."
Akron has received a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to add more hours during the week and expand to Saturdays, Smith said, and officials still have the goal of expanding the program to all of Summit County.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
