The Community Justice Center (CJC) is inviting the community to help determine how the Tompkins County Crisis Alternative Response and Engagement (CARE) Team’s success is measured. The CARE Team is a co-response of a mental health professional and Tompkins County Sheriff’s Deputy that will respond to mental health crises.
Community members can submit ideas for data to be collected and measured on the Tompkins County Community Feedback portal. The CJC and representatives from Tompkins County Whole Health and the Sheriff’s Office will review the ideas and create a final list of data points to be collected and evaluated. The deadline to submit ideas on the portal is Friday, September 22.
Monalita Smiley, Project Director of the Community Justice Center said, “This is a new approach for mental health crisis response in Tompkins County. We’re looking for ideas on how to measure success of the program, in addition to the data that’s collected by our mental health and Sheriff’s teams already. If you have ideas on what success for a co-response looks like, please share it with us.” Smiley added, “We’re going to be tracking things like the demographics of who is served by the program, and how other resources are offered to the people being served by this program. We’re looking forward to seeing the ideas that come directly from the community.”
Tompkins County Administrator Lisa Holmes spoke about the importance of measuring success, “By looking at how well programs like this are doing, we can put resources in areas that are doing well and work to improve programs that have room to grow and improve.” Holmes continued, “Tompkins County is committed to equitable service delivery, and I’m excited to offer a new approach to responding to crisis situations as we continue to Reimagine Public Safety and how to meet the needs of our residents.”
Harmony Ayers Friedlander, Deputy Commissioner of Mental Health and Director of Community Services stated, “People experiencing mental health crises need a compassionate response that not only responds to the immediate concern, but also provides resources to someone to help them moving forward. The C.A.R.E. Team has been a great partnership with the Sheriff’s Office. We’ll continue to put more information out as the program gets up and running.”