As the largest 911 call center in Washington, serving 38 police and fire agencies in Pierce County, South Sound 911 has seen a growing number of the nearly one million annual calls they receive involve someone experiencing a mental or behavioral health crisis.
Aiming to better support these callers, the emergency 911 center has launched a first of its kind model that will bring counselors from the state’s 988 mental health hotline to work alongside dispatchers inside its central-Tacoma office. The collaboration aims to make it easier and faster for dispatchers to divert behavioral health calls away from first responders and towards mental health professionals.
Prior to launching the co-location center, 988 workers and their predecessor at the Suicide Prevention Hotline had worked alongside 911 staffers. Dispatchers at 911 regularly made referrals, or “handoffs” to the mental health hotline. But being in separate spaces and operating independently of each other occasionally led to inefficiencies and had limitations, said Dianna Caber, a communications center manager at South Sound 911.
Alongside other challenges, callers could feel like they were being passed between different agencies, possibly worsening their crisis without getting the right care, she said. A person in crisis also may not be aware of the differences between the two numbers or that 988 exists, she said, and be unsure who to call.
Read more at KitsapSun.com.
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