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Peer Support Engagement Skills on Mobile Crisis Te ...
Presentation Q&A
Presentation Q&A
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One question, Patrick, was, I know at the beginning someone was asking, you were talking about the composition of these mobile teams. How many people on average are, what's kind of the smallest or largest of these mobile, these teams that you've seen in terms of numbers of people? Before the advent of peer support, and at teams frequently were two people, sometimes three people. Generally there might be a social worker, MSW. There has to be somebody involved in the team. You don't want to send out one person on a call, so it's a minimum of two. And there has to be a team member who is able to invoke, involuntarily hold. And it's better if it's a member of the mobile crisis team than if it's law enforcement invoking it because, just because of that factor of authority figures. So generally it's two to three people, even including peer support, that try to keep most mobile crisis teams to three people. You don't want to overwhelm people, and as I said, law enforcement is usually on site. Everyone can fit in one car, it sounds like. And then another question from the audience is, what is the role of international peer support core training in mobile crisis teams? Repeat that again, please. Yeah. So what is the role of, sorry, intentional peer support core training in mobile crisis teams? So intentional peer support, sorry, I misread that. Intentional peer support is a really interesting type of peer training. There's many different training methods around the country. Intentional peer support is the training that focuses the most on trauma and clear, helpful, mutual understanding and communication. It's actually a very good training for people who are going to work in mobile crisis. They may need additional trainings for some of the other skills, but IPS is an excellent training. And a different question. In the composition of these mobile teams, are the police ever part of these teams? It seems like there was much discussion about them, but are they ever part of a team or integrated into one of these teams? They are. I mean, they respond separately, so they're generally not traveling with the team. The team will be coming from a community mental health center or crisis facility or wherever the team is housed. But they work in concert with law enforcement, and frequently in communities that have the assets to do this, there's dedicated officers that respond to these types of calls. And increasingly, it's officers who have gone through specialized training like CIT, and in those cases, the team and the officers are very familiar with each other, and they clearly understand their roles, and they're able to work even more effectively. So the police are there as a safety issue, or if there's something going on that has to result in an arrest. But they're generally there as a safety backup and will step back to allow the team, the clinical team and the peer support team, to do their work to get that best resolution. That makes sense. It's a very different role than kind of the traditional role, as you said, when they're kind of using those authoritative voices and commanding. It's different when they're on a team like this. Got it. And then one last question was, I know you gave a lot of interesting examples. Is there, if people are kind of looking for one or two kind of exemplary kind of examples that you would point people to, to kind of learn more, to study, to see if it's feasible to implement? Are there kind of some really exciting kind of teams or efforts that you've kind of seen that are easy for people to read more and learn about? Well, one that comes to my mind, because I was actually present at the scene, it's not super exciting, but an individual pulled up to a stop sign, a stoplight in a city and they froze and they didn't move and cars started honking and people started going around them and yelling at them. Police were called and responded. And the first police arriving on the scene, you know, it was a traffic incident. And so they were just not trained police officers. The individual had the windows rolled up, doors locked, and was just staring ahead and did not respond at all to the police trying to get their attention. And in that case, the police officers realized that there was more going on here than something where they might need to break the window to pull the person out and take them to jail. So they called mobile crisis team and a CIT officer. And the team with the officer taking the role of law enforcement to direct mixture traffic was dealt with and everything. The team spent over 30 minutes talking to the person, getting them to roll the window down a little bit, calming them and continuing a conversation and then getting information on where they lived and who they lived with. And eventually, after about 45 minutes, the individual's family came to the scene. The person was able to go home with the family. The car was taken by a family member and driven away. And in this, what could have potentially been a very, you know, violent type of resolution because who knows how the person would have reacted if the police had used the baton to break the window or, you know, something more drastic had happened. This was a great resolution, I think, by using mobile crisis, peer support, and CIT trained police law enforcement. That's a wonderful example. I think that may be all the time for questions we have.
Video Summary
In this video, Patrick discusses the composition of mobile crisis teams and the role of law enforcement. Mobile teams usually consist of two to three people, including a social worker and sometimes peer support. The presence of law enforcement is important for safety, but they generally respond separately from the team. In communities with dedicated officers trained in Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), collaboration between the team and police is effective. Patrick shares an example where a mobile crisis team and CIT-trained officers successfully handled a situation involving a person in distress, avoiding a potentially violent outcome. He suggests intentional peer support as valuable training for mobile crisis workers.
Keywords
mobile crisis teams
law enforcement
Crisis Intervention Team
peer support
training
Funding for SMI Adviser was made possible by Grant No. SM080818 from SAMHSA of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, SAMHSA/HHS or the U.S. Government.
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