Windsor Police Service (WPS) is teaming up with Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare to better respond to mental health and addiction-related calls.
Starting today Monday, two officers will be joined by social workers when responding to mental health crisis and addiction-related calls.
The Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team (MCRRT), pairs trained mental health social workers with a frontline officer. The goal is to divert mental health related calls from hospitals to point of care facilities to get individuals the help they need.
Ward 3 city councillor Rino Bortolin sits on the board for Windsor police and says he supports the partnership.
"This has been a need in the community for sometime and partners coming together to work together and bring as much to the table as they could from their own respective expertise and budgets to work was really important," says Bortolin. "So I command Hotel-Dieu Grace for stepping up."
He says there is a need in the community.
"I think this is, I won't go as far as saying revolutionary but definitely really changes the way that we approach it and it brings a microscope and a lens to potentially how policing and mental health should be dealt with going forward," says Bortolin.
Bortolin says the program is starting out small.
"To some extent, we'll almost treat it similar to a pilot in a sense that we'll reassess the statistics and we'll start to look at, what were the benefits of this relationship, what came out it," says Bortolin. "I think we're going to see improved service to the client, to the person experiencing mental health issues at the time."
The team will operate Monday to Friday from 9a.m. to 10 p.m.
Windsor isn't the only city currently pairing specially trained officers with mental health workers, earlier this year, Toronto city council approved a similar initiative for mental health calls.
— with files from AM800's Gord Bacon.