Office of Unified Communications
Metropolitan Police Department
Fire and Emergency Medical Services
When someone is going through a behavioral health crisis, they or someone around them might call 911. Historically, police respond to these calls, but they are not always able to offer the specific support that is needed. Residents in crisis may be better served by behavioral health experts. This is the idea behind DC’s 911 behavioral health diversion program, which launched in 2021. The Lab is using resident-centered design to help the program work better for residents, callers, call-takers, and first responders. We also plan to use a rigorous random or quasi-experimental evaluation to determine how the program affects residents’ well-being.
DBH's Community Response Team at work (Photo credit: DBH)
Why is this issue important in DC?
The District aims to provide the “right care at the right time” for all residents who call 911.1 A behavioral health-specific response has the potential to be more helpful for people experiencing a behavioral health crisis. Though police in DC receive training on behavioral health issues, behavioral health experts may be able to better target the response to the specific support needed. As a result, this new approach could help consistently connect more eligible residents to behavioral health services. It could also increase the availability of emergency resources for other types of crises.
What are we doing?
In 2021, DC started sending some behavioral health 911 calls to a team at the DC Department of Behavioral Health (DBH) instead of to the police. DBH’s behavioral health experts can respond to such calls in person or over the phone. The Lab plans to evaluate whether this approach improves residents' connection to appropriate behavioral health care in the short and long-term.
Before we launch an evaluation, we are working with our agency partners to understand the program and the perspectives of key stakeholders. After listening to more than 100 calls made to 911 or to DBH’s hotlines, we have created a flow chart of how behavioral health 911 calls are handled. We also interviewed call-takers, shadowed call-takers while they work, and rode along with DBH’s Community Response Team (CRT). This work has helped us get “behind the scenes” of the program. We will use the insights we have gained from these experiences to develop recommendations for OUC and DBH on how to improve the program. Our “behind the scenes” work will help us determine the best evaluation strategy, too.
What have we learned?
We will finalize the results of our resident-centered design work in Fall 2023. We plan to finalize our evaluation strategy in late 2023.
What comes next? We expect this project to help us learn how the District can best respond to behavioral health crises. District leaders may rely on the results to shape future emergency response policies.
“The sooner we can identify what a person needs - whether that is an ambulance, a doctor’s appointment, or in this case, a visit from a behavioral health expert, the sooner we can help them. That’s what this is about: making sure we get Washingtonians the help they need when they call us.” ”