Dallas Has Been Dispatching Social Workers to Some 911 Calls. It’s Working.

[SummerMadness]

Dallas Has Been Dispatching Social Workers to Some 911 Calls. It's Working.

Last year, Dallas' police and fire departments teamed up with Parkland Hospital to rethink how they responded to 911 calls involving mental health crises. They placed a social worker inside the dispatch center to triage calls and sent out a special team staffed with a mental health professional whenever possible. They targeted South Central Dallas, the area with the highest concentration of mental health-related calls.

The hope was that social workers could handle these cases without relying on the city's overcrowded emergency rooms and jails.

The results have been promising. In 2019, the volume of psych patients at Parkland's ER rose 30%. But the trend has largely been reversed in areas covered by the program, which is called RIGHT Care. The number of psych patients arriving from those areas dropped by 20%.

When you send in people that don't think shooting somebody is their best options, usually you get better results.

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

Dallas Has Been Dispatching Social Workers to Some 911 Calls. It's Working.


When you send in people that don't think shooting somebody is their best options, usually you get better results.

QFT!

 

[public hermit]

It's good to have more tools than just a hammer.

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

It's good to have more tools than just a hammer.

 

[-57]

When you send in people that don't think shooting somebody is their best options, usually you get better results.

That was an irresponsibe statement and disrespectful to police officers.

 

[Rick Otto]

Dallas Has Been Dispatching Social Workers to Some 911 Calls. It's Working.


When you send in people that don't think shooting somebody is their best options, usually you get better results.

Brilliant... and in Texas, no less!