Making an imPACT

AHS and police team up to help people in crisis

Constables Stewart Bain and Matt Ball see many people on Calgary streets with mental health disorders or addictions who are a threat to themselves or others. 

Until recently, Bain, Ball and their colleagues at the Calgary Police Service had little choice but to take them against their will to jail or an emergency department for treatment.

Now there’s a better option.

Bain and Ball are part of a new Police and Crisis Team (PACT) program based at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre in downtown Calgary. The program pairs a police officer with a mental health clinician from Alberta Health Services (AHS) to provide people access to the supports they need to stay out of jail or hospital and function better in the community.

“We’d take (people) to the hospital because they have threatened to hurt themselves or someone else,” Bain says.

“Now we have the ability to do a mental health assessment and utilize community resources as opposed to plugging up the emergency wards.”

Both Bain and Ball have a special interest in psychology and find their new task to be extremely rewarding.

“Front-line police officers don’t usually get the opportunity to do any kind of followup with people but Stewart and I get to be part of the solution by providing long-term support to these individuals,” says Ball. “It’s great to see people transform after we’ve been persistent in providing them treatment.”

The Calgary Police Service or AHS’s Mobile Response Team calls in PACT in situations where someone appears violent or intoxicated. While PACT proactively reaches out to people on the streets, the team will respond to anyone in mental health, addiction or psychosocial crisis who could be a danger to themselves or the public.

First, Bain and Ball determine if the situation is safe. Then their partners, social worker Kristen Adolfson and psychiatric nurse Trish Dribnenki-Pennock, assess the individual’s mental health status.

“I start my assessment from the minute I say hello,” says Adolfson. “I am looking at the person’s physical appearance. Are they well groomed? Dressed oddly? Are they looking after themselves physically? As long as the individual isn’t intoxicated or under the influence of drugs, I can complete an assessment.”

Adolfson and Dribnenki-Pennock glean a lot of information by asking questions. They can decide whether a person needs emergency services or community supports, such as a distress centre or detox facility. If an individual needs to go to detox, Adolfson and Dribnenki-Pennock follow up and complete the assessment when the person is sober.

“Our goal is to work with these individuals within their community and look for creative ways to treat them,” says Dribnenki-Pennock.  “The conventional means of treating the vulnerable population isn’t always effective and we want to ensure they don’t end up in a gap in service.”
Since January, there have been two PACT teams operating out of the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre, with three more teams coming on stream before the summer.

PACT is already making a positive difference in downtown Calgary on the quality of life for people, including a man who was arrested 28 times in 2009.

“We’re setting up housing for him and he comes to see us once a week, so Kristen can monitor his mental health,” Bain says. “Our hope is that once he’s in housing and has other supports in place, he’ll remain stable.”

Similar programs have been running in Grande Prairie since 2009 and in Edmonton since 2004.

During the past six years, Edmonton PACT teams have responded to more than 4,000 calls for service and consulted on more than 4,000 mental health crisis calls.

"The PACT initiatives are an excellent example of collaboration that results in better care and outcomes for some of the most vulnerable in our population,” says Cathy Pryce, vice-president of Addiction and Mental Health for AHS.