Santa Barbara County Grand Jury
• 2023-2024
• Agency Response
Response to:
Individuals in Crisis report
Das Williams First District Board of Supervisors Laura Capps County Administration Building Second District, Vice Chair*
⚠️ Aviso de traducción: Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 1 findings
F1
The Jury finds that increased implementation of the 5150 holds by trained law enforcement officers and more Behavioral Wellness clinicians would benefit all citizen of Santa Barbara County. The Board of Supervisors (Board) agrees that the expansion of trained law enforcement officers with 5150 hold ability and more Behavioral Wellness clinicians would be beneficial to Santa Barbara County citizens. There is currently much collaboration occurring between law enforcement and Behavioral Wellness clinicians, but there is benefit to further investments in training and additional clinicians to support our community's most vulnerable.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1a
The Jury recommends that the Board of Supervisors direct Behavioral Wellness to increase the number of clinicians available for Co-Response Teams. The Board has supported Co-Response teams as an opportunity to better serve the citizens and divert mentally ill individuals from our Jails. Behavioral Wellness coordinates Co- Response teams with the Sheriff's Office, Santa Barbara Police Department, and Santa Maria Police Department. Each team is equipped with a clinician. However, this recommendation will not be implemented as each team is fully staffed and Co-Response utilization data does not demonstrate need for additional staffing at this time. In February 2024, Behavioral Wellness and independent consultant, KPMG, provided an operational and performance report on County Crisis Services to the Board. Data from the report showed a low call volume for the Sheriff's Co-response teams. Per the report, "Co- response teams experienced low volumes over the four-week period analyzed with a total of 62 calls received across its three teams. This equates to an average of 16 service interactions per week, five service interactions per team per week, or one service interaction per day across each team. Across weeks, Co-response spent an average of 77 minutes on crisis services calls, lower than that of Mobile Crisis."<sup>2</sup> To address concerns of disparate data from the Sheriff and Behavioral Wellness, KPMG made recommendations regarding establishing shared definitions for data collection and metrics for outcome reporting. The departments are in the process of working on these recommendations. In early 2024, the Medi-Cal benefit for mobile crisis response in our community began. The County will be monitoring both the new mobile crisis response as well as the Co- Response teams' utilization and continue to evaluate whether additional resources are needed. KPMG and Behavioral Wellness Board of Supervisors Crisis Services Report, February 6, 2024. Link: https://santabarbara.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6503638&GUID=8B856364-807B- 4F7F-BE35-6D84695EA6FB <sup>2</sup> Attachment A: KPMG and Behavioral Wellness Crisis Services Board of Supervisors Final Report, pg. 68
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.