![]() Senator Dhingra claims she’s working with the cohort of policymakers from the trip to make the state foot the bill for the first 23 hours of care delivered to these patients, which would at least serve as a partial answer to the funding shortfall Zahilay identified. He also pointed out – and stop me if this sounds familiar – that Washington’s regressive tax code means local governments such as King County have limited means to raise the funding required to pay for treating and housing people in crisis. To replicate Arizona’s system, we must address the acute shortage of supportive housing and the lack of health care capacity to treat people in crisis, he said. In a phone interview, Councilmember Zahilay stressed that solving the technical challenges of standing up the crisis hotline won’t create a new system overnight. If the team can’t resolve the person’s issue on-site, then they can take the patient to one of Phoenix’s crisis recovery centers, which are designed to help stabilize patients and to refer them to appropriate service providers. For those rare occasions that require an in-person response, a two-person team composed of a trained health care provider and a “peer” of the person in crisis meets the patient and guides them through the process of accessing whatever care they need. Only 10% of calls require an in-person team of service providers, she said. That assistance, according to Senator Dhingra’s recollection of the presentation from officials who run Arizona’s program, primarily takes place over the phone. In the sprawling desert state, residents have access to a hotline staffed 24/7 with enough people and resources to help whoever calls for assistance during a mental health crisis. To quote wannabe Seattle City Council Public Safety Committee chair Sara Nelson: “People are dying.”īut it doesn’t have to be that way, and Arizona has already proven that a better world is possible. According to research conducted by Seattle University professors in partnership with the Seattle Police Department, cops arrest people involved in crisis-flagged incidents “at a consistently higher rate.” People in crisis are also “more likely to be charged, taken into custody, and incarcerated and are more likely to be female.” They are also 16 times more likely to die during interactions with law enforcement, so building up this alternative system seems like it should be a fairly urgent priority. Washington desperately needs this kind of overhaul. ![]() One of the service providers the lawmakers met with does operate a crisis recovery center here in Fife, which is a promising proof-of-concept, but it's well short of the institutional capacity needed to serve the entire state. And although Seattle boasts a few programs that attempt to fill this gap, they lack the funding and personnel needed to provide the level of service that Senator Dhingra believes every community across the state deserves. Currently, the lack of such a system means that almost all calls to 911 regarding someone in crisis trigger a response from an armed police officer rather than from a trained health care provider or social worker.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |