CARES Pilot Program: What You Should Know

MADISON, WI—In anticipation of the new CARES mental health emergency service starting in August, the city hosted a public information session Tuesday to outline what the pilot program will look like and to give residents the opportunity to give feedback.

Assistant Fire Chief Ché Stedman and Sarah Henrickson, a mental health professional with Journey Mental Health, led the virtual presentation and Q&A, along with Kara Kratowicz, a member of the city's HR department, and Deputy Mayor Reuben Sanon.

Starting sometime this August, the CARES team will consist of one van, two community paramedics, two crisis workers from Journey and a project manager who will track data— a position just recently approved during last week’s city council meeting.

For the first few months, the teams will only serve the downtown area (based out of Fire Station 3 on Williamson Street) and work eight hours between 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on the weekdays. This was the peak time and area where data showed the most mental health-related 911 calls are made, Stedman said.

CARES, which stands for Community Alternative Response Emergency Services, will serve as a city-funded mental health outreach team. Facilitated through the main 911 call center, CARES teams will be dispatched for nonviolent calls like wellness checks, mental health crises or drug and alcohol-related issues.

The program will work closely with Journey Mental Health Center, a Madison-based clinic that specializes in emergency and community-based services. The center also has a partnership with Dane County Health Services, which will be overseeing CARES.

For now, the future of the CARES program will depend on collecting a few months of data and community feedback, Stedman explained. With a current budget of around $600,000, the ability to expand down the line would also depend on funding, he said.

“As we go through this in three or four months, and we're really able to start evaluating some good data, we might find that it's better for us to expand the hours of the day before we expand geographically,” Stedman said. “We also might find the opposite—it might be better for us to start working on the weekends in a different district. So all of the changes that we make are going to be based on data and based on input from providers, and based on the success and feedback from our clients."

The Madison Police Department receives an average of 20 mental health calls a day, adding up to over 7,000 per year, according to the presentation. The CARES team would not only respond to these types of nonviolent situations over police when available, but they would also make specialized referrals and follow-up with clients.

“The intervention doesn't end with the handoff of a person with a referral—we're also going to be doing a lot of follow up calls to people based on their situation,” Stedman said.

Accompanying these follow-ups, the teams are expected to build trust and relationships within the community. This trust and representation is a key aspect of the program, as Henrickson explained, the CARES teams are going through special bias training and both hired crisis workers are people of color.

“We were very direct with the notion of making sure that we had a team that represented a community,” Henrickson said.

Along with the Q&A, participants gave their feedback regarding the branding of the CARES vehicle and uniforms—with some of the common concerns involving stigma around mental illness and not wanting the CARES team to resemble other — possibly alarming — emergency vehicles.

Overwhelmingly, participants agreed that the CARES team should use a CARES branded vehicle and clothing—opposed to Madison Fire or City of Madison logos. The van will not have an alarm or adhere to the same legal restrictions as an ambulance.

There will be two additional public information sessions. One will be held during the pilot program and another after.