By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 13, 2022 | A public health program with a 98 percent success rate that began in Conyers has been expanded to Gwinnett County and beyond.
The counties forming Gwinnett Newton Rockdale Public Health Department, working with View Point Health of Lawrenceville, originally started the program with the Conyers Police Department. It pairs a public health clinician with a policeman to form a Behavior Health unit, which responds to civil incidents needing police to deescalate mental health emergencies, and connect individuals with mental illness to appropriate care.
The units have a 98 percent diversion rate, meaning that only two percent of the people involved in such incidents are taken to jail. After the initial success in Conyers, and in talking with Gwinnett officials, View Point Health realized that this was a means to do something different to provide resources for police encountering incidents when people needed access to mental health aid, instead of sending them to jail in such encounters.
Now Gwinnett County has six full time clinicians on the job, while the cities of Lawrenceville, Norcross and Suwanee each have teams. The Gwinnett County teams work 12 hours shifts so that this service is always available. Three other cities, Decatur, Dunwoody and Chamblee, have relied on View Point Health to give them assistance in forming teams.
Initial funding for the Gwinnett teams has come out of the American Rescue Act, which stipulates their use, and how co-responder programs might be funded in the future. In Gwinnett County, there are about 300 calls a month for Behavioral Health teams.
The first such program in the nation similar to this began in San Antonio, Tex. in 2008 which had experienced incidents along its Riverwalk. The growth of public intoxication and rowdiness was making this a nuisance area. Tourism was significantly disrupted, and city officials recognized the problem. So the city instituted a Behavior Health unit, composed of a public health clinician to accompany a policeman. Today San Antonio tourism in the city is back to normal because of the pairing of clinicians with a policeman. In San Antonio, their intervention team is called a Crisis Intervention Team.
View Point Health officials say there is a shortage of people trained and available for this kind of work. Requirements include a master’s degree in counseling or social work, and a license from the State of Georgia. Those hired are employees of View Point Health, which contracts with the county for this work. Benefits are high: View Point Health contributes 7.5 percent of all salaries toward a 401-K retirement plan.
Gwinnett officials say that of the 98 percent who are not arrested in such disturbances, 19 percent go voluntarily to the hospital, while eight percent are hospitalized involuntarily. Most are released without going to the hospital or jail. In about one-third of the cases, there is no follow-up necessary of such incidences.
The most dramatic incident where the Behavior Health team responded to a recent incident in Gwinnett was when an armed man tried to take over a Greyhound bus, which shut down Interstate 85 for three hours near the Indian Trail Road in March of 2022. The SWAT team also responded, but it was the Behavior Health team that resolved that issue by taking the person into custody without anyone getting hurt.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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