Toronto’s first response team to mental health crisis – without police – launches in March

Toronto’s long-awaited civic-led mental health crisis response teams will hit the streets within weeks.

The city on Wednesday unveiled new details about its non-police mental health crisis response effort, including a revised March launch date for two of four planned pilot teams, and a request for an additional $ 8.5 million in funding this year to help them run.

The Community Crisis Support Service teams are the first of their kind in the province, and will send nurses and mental health support workers instead of police officers to respond to 911 calls about people in crisis.

They were unanimously approved by the city council last February after increasing protests against police brutality and the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, an Afro-Indian Toronto woman who died in the police presence during a mental health crisis call in May 2020.

The first two pilots will be launched in the city’s northeast and downtown northeast areas in March, while the remaining two will launch in the northwest and downtown in June – areas marked as most in need. Details were announced in a proposal that will go before the city’s executive committee next week.

Mayor John Tory spoke to the media earlier Wednesday, saying the pilot teams are a “significant new initiative” and the city is committed to developing them. If the pilots are successful, the goal is to expand them nationwide by 2025 or earlier.

“Residents and community organizations have made it clear that they want a non-police response, in appropriate situations, to those in crisis,” Tory said.

The Gerstein Crisis Center, which has been running a small-scale mental health crisis response program in downtown Toronto for more than 30 years, will lead the launch from downtown downtown. TAIBU Community Health Center, a Scarborough-based agency that has been supporting Black communities in Toronto since its inception 14 years ago, will manage the northeast pilot.

The northwest pilot will be led by the Canadian Mental Health Association of Toronto, and the pilot in the west downtown will be indigenously led and led by 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations, a nonprofit social service in the St. Louis area. Lawrence area.

“We are really looking forward to demonstrating in this launch that when communities come together and plan services, we can have effective support for people,” Liben Gebremikael, executive director of TAIBU, told the Star.

The pilots’ terms are set out in a memorandum of understanding signed by both city staff and the Toronto Police Department, Wednesday’s report set out. The non-police teams will provide crisis response to calls made to both 911 and 211, the city’s community and social services helpline.

For 911 calls, teams will, with the consent of the caller, respond to calls in their geographic area that are “non-emergency and have no public safety concerns,” the report said. All calls will be tested by 211’s dispatch center.

Types of calls the teams can respond to include imminent suicide, a person in crisis, wellness investigations, disorderly conduct, disputes, and any calls that have a behavioral or mental health element that benefits from a non-police, community-based response. In 2020, Toronto police responded to more than 33,000 person-in-crisis calls – the highest volume to date.

The teams will include nurses, mental health clinicians, addiction specialists, and other support staff and people with lived experience who will be trained in de-escalation practices and harm reduction, the city outlined.

All teams will also have case management staff who will refer callers to other organizations in the area if long-term support is needed.

Gerbmikael said TAIBU is still finalizing its team, which will include wellness outreach workers who will promote the pilot in the community and will work to determine if individuals need help before reaching a crisis point.

Susan Davis, executive director of the Gerstein Center, said the agency will appoint 20 staff members for their pilot team, including those who will help with referrals.

The city said there are plans to evaluate the teams on an annual basis to measure their outcomes. The findings will be used to help guide how the program develops going forward.

Expansion, the city report said, will depend on whether the teams are effective in meeting the needs of callers and connecting them to supports, as well as whether the city is able to meet the resource needs of the team.

City staff currently plan to fund about $ 8.5 million this year to operate the four pilots, including the appointment of six new full-time staff to help support their implementation. This will be in addition to the $ 2.8 million allocated in 2021 to help set up the pilots, as well as to pay for shipping equipment and radios for the mobile crews.

Tory said the pilots are fully funded in this year’s proposed budget. “We know this is something residents want, and we know we need to put enough resources behind it,” he said.

Gerbmikael said his organization is looking forward to continued support from the city so that the teams can become permanent. Davis added that the pilots’ success also lies in the fact that different organizations – hospitals, social services and police – work together to ensure that people in need receive it.

“Creating low barriers to entry, and making people feel comfortable being able to reach out when they are in a crisis, will be very important,” she said.