Blog note: this article references a 2016 grand jury report.
Shasta County’s first mental health office on wheels dedicated to helping people in crisis started making the rounds in greater Redding on Jan.1.
The unit is taking urgent mental health care to people who are at the breaking point, whether they’re at home, at a business or on the street.
The mobile service is being run by the Hill Country Health and Wellness Center nonprofit, under a contract with the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency.
The mobile service aims to help prevent unnecessary visits to hospital emergency rooms or unneeded calls to 911 or to the police.
“We’ve been told by law enforcement that a lot of the calls that they get are mental health-related,” said Paige Greene, deputy branch director of Adult Services for the Shasta County Health and Human Services agency. “This is an opportunity to call the mobile crisis unit and have them come out and see if there’s an urgent condition and see what they can do to manage that,” Greene said.
Police end up handling many such calls, even though they are not typically the best solution for people during a mental health crisis episode.
Just over 30 percent of last year's calls for service to Redding police in connection with mental health-related cases resulted in arrest, or 256 total arrests out of 781 cases, according to the department.
Hill Country's mobile mental health office on wheels is dispatched to help people in crisis, whether they're at home, at a business or on the street. (Photo: Hill Country Health and Wellness Center, Redding)
In addition, many non-emergency mental health-related cases ended up being treated in Redding’s two hospital emergency rooms last year.
“There are still a high number of calls to 911 and of people walking into emergency rooms to get help for mental health issues who don’t necessarily need to be hospitalized,” said Tammy Allen, behavior health director with Hill Country.
“They don’t know exactly what they want to do, they just know they need help,” Allen said.
That need led to Hill Country opening its walk-in urgent mental health care clinic in downtown Redding at 1401 Gold St. two years ago.
The walk-in center is staffed with mental health providers who help people deal with a range of critical issues, from suicide prevention to family counseling for Carr Fire-traumatized children.
The clinic is open 365 days a year.
The Care Center reported 550 unique encounters in its first year and is poised to double those totals for its second year, said Jo Campbell, a Hill Country behavioral health consultant.
Campbell said that in the past, “If somebody called and said, ‘my 17-year-old son is actively suicidal,’ we’d say ‘bring him to the care center.’”
With their mobile health service up and running, she said, “now, we could send mobile crisis out to the home, if that would seem better for the situation.”
The mobile crisis team will only be dispatched to a site after law enforcement officers have deemed the situation to be safe, Campbell said.
The crisis team fashioned their mobile office inside a sleek, converted 25-foot recreational vehicle. The vehicle is equipped with a couch, bathroom and television and is staffed by a therapist and a case manager.
Also on board is a peer specialist — someone who has overcome a mental health challenge themselves and been trained to help others who are now in a crisis situation.
Beyond Redding, the mobile crisis service can, in some cases, respond to calls from Shasta Lake and Anderson, Hill Country said.
While it now operates 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, the mobile service eventually aims to operate seven days a week and extend its service hours into the evening, said Campbell.
The mobile team anticipates responding to “at least two to three calls a day,” said Paige Greene, deputy branch director of Adult Services at HHSA.
Capacity for the service will eventually reach five to 10 calls a day, officials said.
It’s taken a while for the Mobile Crisis Outreach Team to get off the ground.
Securing funding took some time.
A 2016 Shasta County grand jury report said the county should consider a mobile crisis unit that could be dispatched to wherever a person is in need.
At that time, Shasta County applied for, but was not awarded, state funding that would’ve covered the cost.
Grant money from Shasta County’s Whole Person Care Pilot Project is now paying for the service, said Shasta County's Greene. That grant provides $483,588 per year and will end on Dec. 31, 2020, according to the state.
Call the Mobile Crisis Outreach Team at 530-238-7133. Call Hill Country’s walk-in urgent mental health care clinic at 530-691-4446.
January 22, 2019
Redding Record Searchlight
By Michele Chandler
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