Durham's 2021 Crisis Advocate Response and Engagement (CARE) Initiative

The City of Durham through the Durham Police Department (DPD), lead agency, is requesting a total of $848,337, which includes a match of $356,098, in funding from the USDOJ/OJP/BJA under the FY21 Connect and Protect: Law Enforcement Behavioral Health Responses Program to plan and implement its initiative. DPD is seeking priority consideration under: Promote effective strategies by law enforcement to identify and reduce the risk of harm to individuals with MI or CMISA and to public safety and High-Poverty. In 2010 Durham was awarded the FY10 Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program: Planning and Implementation. This grant assisted DPD in adding funding to its budget for one full-time Licensed Clinician and training for Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officers.

In order to respond to Durham’s growing mental health population’s needs, the City’s Police and Community Safety Departments, Emergency Communications, and Easterseal UCP are collaborating in the development of a Crisis Advocate Response and Engagement (CARE) Initiative. CARE is a pilot project of the City of Durham’s Police and Community Safety Departments.  The program will serve as a co-responder model between law enforcement and mental health and implement a crisis call diversion program. Specifically, it is expected that the extended outreach and follow-up will significantly reduce the number of arrests, incarcerations and requests for service from citizens having MI or CMISA issues. CARE will serve as an enhancement to the DPD’s current CIT program, by pairing CIT trained officers with a Licensed Clinician in a co-response model. With these combined efforts, the program aims to significantly improve outcomes related both to criminal justice involvement and engagement in treatment. This program will also develop a crisis call diversion program, that will embed a mental health clinician into our 911 call center, to improve our ability to identify and redirect non-emergent, non-life threatening calls for service that are mental health related. The crisis call diversion program will help to identify and reduce the risk of harm to individuals with MI or CMISA issues and to public safety, by handling calls remotely by tele-counselors, dispatch the calls to the Community Safety Department’s mobile crisis response teams, or dispatch to the co-response team.  

If awarded this grant, funding would be used to contract three Licensed Clinicians, fund site visits to other law enforcement agencies that have implemented both programs to learn best practices, CIT training, and purchase supplies and equipment needed for the three new clinicians.