The drop in call was held as usual in April, providing space for learning sites to speak with one another, raise issues they are facing, and give CSG updates on what they are doing. Below are the updates from the sites present on the April call. Miami-Dade (MDPD) put officers through training for a crisis response unit, over 100 hours of training. Their graduation is May 1st so they will be out on the road soon. MDPD wanted to hire peers for the system of care and what they found was that most of the peers have some kind of criminal background and just to be a peer they have to pass the level 2 background check. To work for the provider, there is an exemption process where you can appeal the reason why you were rejected. Co-response is even tougher because you need to pass the full police background. Thriving Mind is probably going to start working with City of Miami.
Bexar County had a couple of meetings coming up with Athens, GA and a crisis clinic in Massachusetts. Hiring is still in flux, they are trying to make sure they are fully staffed, working with commissioner's court to get additional staffing for the staff officer (SO) and hopefully more bodies for Specialized Multidisciplinary Alternate Response Team (SMART). One thing they have done is isolate clinicians as far as access to protected info so they are not co-deploying so the clinicians do not have to pass certain CGIS background checks and access to info.
Harris County just got back from Alabama to present to law enforcement officers and legislature on their Harris center programming, funding sources, they were really passionate about getting their mental health programming off the ground. All the contracting for CORE is renewing right around now, and the state CIT conference is happening tomorrow. The speed dating type of hiring event they had brought in a bunch of good applicants but nobody was able to pass the background check.
LAPD there have been talks about expanding the SMART teams but the staffing is such a challenge that this is not happening.
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