GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Brown County officials are looking to improve mental health services, and one way to do that is expanding their mobile crisis response.
“Broader mobile outreach means we will continue to improve our quality of care for those with behavioral health needs in our community,” said Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach at a press conference Tuesday. “This ultimately saves time, not only for the staff, but most importantly for the individual who is having a crisis situation.”
An ad-hoc Mental Health Treatment Committee helped put together these ideas to address the rising need of quality mental health services in Brown County.
The group came together to address the $1.15 million the county is pledging to help get resources to people in crisis sooner. It would be split up thusly: $350,000 will go towards a daily reporting center; $300,000 will each go towards detox and transitional residential treatment programs and $200,000 to the mobile crisis response team. It will be made up of an additional 3 full-time staffers to bring help to where the person is, instead of relying on those in crisis to seek it out.
“Our intent is that we reduce the number of movements people make, provide a more coordinated response and reduce the amount of time it takes to reduce a mental health crisis situation,” said Erik Pritzl, Director of Brown County Human Services. “Our proposal is to add 90 to 100 hours of mobile crisis services each week and provide on-site mobile crisis services within 30 minutes in Brown County.”
“Having somebody right there with you, and have an agency come right in the door with you, is going to be a huge asset,” added Green Bay Police Department Community Officer Paul Van Handel.
IMPACT ON LAW ENFORCEMENT
While the ultimate goal is to improve response and reaction to a mental health crisis for the individual, local law enforcement say this will also help them out.
“You give that person help immediately, solve the problem so that officers are reducing the crisis that the person is having, but then also reducing our call volume so that we can get to other calls we have to deal with,” said Brown County Sheriff’s Department Captain Dan Sandberg. “It’s also going to save us on transport time.”
Officer Van Handel says they have a “Basic Needs” group which started two years ago, focusing primarily on alcohol treatment. But that needed to change.
“We quickly became aware that we couldn’t solve one problem without the other,” said Van Handel. “Our overall goal was really to establish a continuum of care for AODA and mental health treatment, then identify where gaps existed in current services. One of the most important gaps that was identified was intervention services, mostly in-home when people are in crisis.”
IMPROVING ASSESSMENT, OUTCOMES
Counselors at the Family Services crisis center take phones calls 24 hours a day from people dealing with things like suicidal thoughts, depression, family members with concerns about loved ones, seeking out resources, or just looking to talk.
According to President and CEO Jeff Vande Leest, they had more than 25,000 contacts in the community last year. However, case workers were only able to make roughly 1,200 face-to-face contacts. Vande Leest says those in-person contacts can make a huge difference.
“Meet with individuals and families in their own environment that are experiencing crisis,” explained Vande Leest, “We’re much better able to assess what their needs are and to be able to look at what treatment options might be available.”
This spending plan must still be approved by both the Brown County Human Services Committee and the full county board. The human services committee meets Wednesday night, while the board of supervisors is expected to take this up early next month.
Vande Leest hopes to have the 3 new, full-time staffers hired and launch the program as early as mid-March.
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