(File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Charlene Tebbutt

Police and health workers see early success with new PACT team

Mar 11, 2019 | 5:57 PM

It’s early days yet, but those working with the new Police and Crisis Team (PACT) in Prince Albert say they’re seeing success in pairing front-line police officers with mental health workers in emergencies.

Just a few months after the new PACT initiative was announced in October, local mental health workers and police said the idea was working in Prince Albert. P.A. was one of four Saskatchewan communities to get funding last fall for the new team.

Mental health staff are called in to work with people in crisis and determine the next steps for care once police have secured the scene of an incident. The initiative is a first for Prince Albert and includes two police officers and three mental health workers.

Since the team was put into place, officers and health care workers have partnered on more than 170 calls from early October up to the end of February for incidents ranging from mental health issues or suicide, to intoxicated people, assaults, disturbances and family disputes. PACT members also assist other agencies, such as mobile crisis and hospital staff and work with people in police cells, especially those who are intoxicated, to try to connect them with programs that can help.

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“When traumas occur, we are offering support,” said Kyla Oakes, assessor coordinator with the Saskatchewan Health Authority and a representative with Prince Albert Community Mobilization’s HUB initiative. “A lot of what we’re attending to is risk assessments, assisting police to know what is high risk and what isn’t and who needs to be transported for further care, and who doesn’t, and how we can manage them in the community.”

Real-time support

Unlike the HUB initiative under the Community Mobilization program, where case files are reviewed after an incident, PACT teams operate in real-time, Oakes said. The team is not meant to provide ongoing case management, she explained.

“I think when police respond there’s a different response from the clients than when you have a mental health person who shows up and isn’t in uniform and maybe doesn’t have a history with you,” Oakes added. “So it’s a different approach.”

Calls for the PACT team come in several different ways: through 911, through local emergency services, or directly from health workers. Dispatchers with the Prince Albert Police Service have received 105 calls, or 62 per cent of the calls for the PACT since October.

In 2018, Prince Albert Police officers responded to just over 500 mental health-related calls, a number that has risen each year since 2015. Substance abuse issues, including meth, accounted for 44 per cent of PACT calls to February of this year.

New age of policing

Jason Stonechild, deputy chief with the Prince Albert Police Service, said the initiative is a welcome one. Before the program was put into place, officers could spend hours trying to connect a person in crisis with the right resources.

“There are examples where our members have been tied up at the hospital for eight to 10 hours,” Stonechild said. “For mental health-related calls that affect the front-line officers, we’ve seen a 23 per cent decrease in calls for service … it’s the new age of policing.”

The PACT team has also been instrumental in addressing the significant number of habitual runaways and missing persons in Prince Albert, Stonechild said. That issue accounts for 900 to 1,000 calls to police each year.

“Ninety per cent of the time, or more, those are habitual runaways that are having life challenges, and that is a mental health issue,” he added. “And that’s one example of many different types of calls they attend for our service.”

Deb McCready, interim manager of rehabilitation services with the SHA said the initiative brings the right resources at the right time to those in crisis. It’s still too early for a full evaluation of the program, but more staff and funding is already needed, she said.

“The big piece is in the training and the assessment, [so] they have the right training to do the assessments at the time, and where the client’s at,” McCready added.

Work is also underway to educate community partners about the PACT and its role. Since October, more than a dozen information meetings have also taken place around the community.

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Charlene.tebbutt@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @CharleneTebbutt