The city’s mobile crisis team is still in a period of uncertainty, almost four months since it went on hiatus.
The first responder service — a partnership between the fire department, local nonprofit Substance Abuse Connect (SAC) and the Rimrock Foundation — operated for 11 months diverting mental health emergencies away from law enforcement by sending a Rimrock clinician and an EMT to mental health-related police calls.
The Rimrock Foundation pulled out of the program at the end of August, citing delayed reimbursements from the state, low call volume and difficulty finding clinicians to participate in a first responder environment.
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The local program has now been awarded over $500,000 from the state, but its leaders have been unable to secure a new behavioral health provider or decide on how to improve the program’s model based on what they learned from the program’s initial run…