Dear friends and members of the community who provide care or advocacy for people with mental health needs in our community:

This letter is to request your support in expanding our mobile crisis response services in Santa Cruz County. This letter, with all signatures, will ultimately be presented to the Board of Supervisors, County staff, other elected officials, and the public.

The county currently has several invaluable mobile crisis response services including MERT (Mobile Emergency Response Team) and MERTY (Mobile Emergency Response Team for Youth) as well as mental health liaisons that accompany law enforcement in appropriate crisis situations. The Santa Cruz County Behavioral Health Services staff continues to work hard to find and secure funding to expand these services so that they may address more of the needs of the people in our community. We are so pleased to learn that they have recently been awarded significant grant funding that will enable expansion of services and critical programs for our community. 

However, the current available resources are limited in the scope of needs, situations, and locations to which they can respond as well as the hours that these services are available (MERT operates 7 days/week excluding holidays from 8:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; MERTY operates M-F from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.). Consequently, there is a dire need in the community for 24/7/365 non-law enforcement, mobile crisis response services that fill in the gaps that the existing services do not provide. This need is likely to expand when all crisis lines nationwide switch over to the new 988 system in July 2022, as the volume of calls pertaining to mental health crises is anticipated to increase substantially.

Santa Cruz County needs mobile crisis services that:

•  Respond to calls involving mental health crises, substance abuse crises, the mental health needs of people experiencing homelessness, welfare checks, and similar situations.     
•  Dispatch responders who are teams comprised of a trained crisis counselor and an EMT. These teams should be unarmed, non-uniformed, non-law enforcement, trained and experienced in de-escalation and crisis intervention.
• Dispatch responders who use a van without sirens or lights, and are able to transport people to access other resources, if needed.
• Operate 24/7/365.
• Dispatch responders who are able to go wherever they are needed, including residences or on the streets.

The expansion of mobile crisis services to meet these needs will serve a number of critical functions for the community. These services will:

• Meet a much greater scope of needs experienced by a much larger portion of our community, especially some of our most vulnerable.
• Unburden law enforcement from dealing with nonviolent situations in which individuals would benefit from a different type of response.
• Greatly reduce the need for ER visits and the impact on local hospitals.
• Reduce the financial impact of utilizing law enforcement and the Emergency Department unnecessarily.
• Provide a cost-effective, appropriate first-response that fits the needs of the members of the community. Law enforcement response to many types of situations is not needed, at best, and harmful, at worst.
• Be able to meet people where they are, regardless of location.

If you provide care or advocacy for people with mental health needs and support this expansion of mobile crisis services in Santa Cruz County, please sign this letter and include:

Your name 

Your credentials (e.g., LCSW, LMFT, RN, PsyD)

Your zip code

Thank you for your support for these much-needed resources in our community.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Arlt & Stacey Smith, Parents of Sean Smith Arlt killed by 4 SCPD officers responding to 911 mental health crisis call

M. Lee Brokaw, Chair, Police Accountability & Transparency Committee, Santa Cruz County Chapter, ACLU of Northern California

Kirsten Carraway, Ph.D., Psychologist, Santa Cruz

Peter Gelblum, Chair, Santa Cruz County Chapter, ACLU of Northern California

Gail Pellerin, Retired Santa Cruz County Clerk; Board member, NAMI Santa Cruz

Bruce Van Allen,Trustee, Santa Cruz County Board of Education; Former Mayor, Santa Cruz

Carol Williamson, Former Volunteer Board President, NAMI Santa Cruz