Car 60 Celebrates 1st Year of Operations
Prince George, B.C. -It’s been one year since the Car 60 program started rolling in Prince George and it is making a difference.
Patterned after a similar program operating in Surrey, the Car 60 program pairs a plain clothed police officer with a mental health nurse to respond to calls which involve mental health or substance abuse issues.
In the past, when RCMP in Prince George received such a call for service, the attending officer would end up spending several hours at the hospital while the individual they brought there underwent assessment and treatment. Under the new program, general duty officers respond to a call, assess the situation and, if it involves people with mental health or substance-use issues, will call in Car 60. The nurse and police officer together decide if the person in crisis needs to access local community resources or taken to hospital for immediate medical attention.
In 2015, RCMP in Prince George responded to more than 1,000 mental health related calls. That’s a 3% increase over the previous year. Since the program was launched in April of 2015, and the end of 2015, the Car 60 team responded to 600 of those calls or about 66 per month.
“The Car 60 Program has provided a more thorough first response and after care intervention for these clients. From a strategic and innovative perspective, it has provided wrap-around care that goes beyond putting a Band-Aid on the momentary crisis,” said Superintendent Warren Brown, Officer in Charge of the Prince George RCMP. “Up until the Car 60 Program, when a crisis occurred in these peoples’ lives, our response was simple yet inadequate; stop the crisis and transport them either to jail or the local hospital. From a community perspective, I believe this is a better use of our resources as it identifies root causes.”
“We have more time to take in the scenario and gather collateral information to support what the individual needs. For example, do they need intervention from a local mental health team or hospitalization?” says Const. Sonja Blom. “We’ve received overwhelmingly positive support from the community, general duty RCMP, and Northern Health staff.”
Comments
It’s a good news story that helps people get the help they need unfortunately in the past when the police were called they often had no choice but to arrest the person who would then fall into the police system rather than medical system as the police are not equipped to deal with medical now with car 60 these same people can get proper medical treatment they need
Kudos to the program
It sounds like this needs to be adopted all over. In recent years we’ve heard an awful lot of news about incidents in which police respond with dubious appropriateness to situations involving someone with mental health problems, who all too often ends up dead.
The recent deaths in Granisle come to mind!
Car 60 is a good idea, but it would be better if it operated 24 hours a day. People are in crisis during the night as well. With this report perhaps the program will be expanded.
it is a great program, but wait till the beaurocrats gets their grease hands on them, and it will become another toothless tiger.
This is Win-Win-Win result. Northern Health, the RCMP, and ultimately, the patient or the client themselves will receive the treatment that they need in a time of crisis. I hope that this initiative expands in Prince George and elsewhere.
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