SUNDRE - Building on past success, the Alberta RCMP intends to continue expanding Regional Police and Crisis Teams (RPACT) throughout the province with a focus on reaching more rural areas.
Originally introduced more than 10 years ago in Edmonton as the result of a collaborative initiative alongside Alberta Health Services (AHS), the unit’s teams are comprised of an officer as well as a mental health specialist who together respond to mental health calls.
Since launching in 2011, teams have been established in detachments including Red Deer, Grande Prairie as well as Airdrie.
Last spring, multiple teams that respond to area communities were also started out of Rocky Mountain House as well as Cochrane.
The former serves Sundre, Rocky Mountain house, Innisfail, Blackfalds, Rimbey, Sylvan Lake and Drayton Valley, while the latter serves Lake Louise, Banff, Canmore, Cochrane, Airdrie rural, Didsbury, Olds, Three Hills, Drumheller, Chestermere and Strathmore, said Cpl. David Bibeau, the Cochrane-based supervisor for RPACT south.
As of this past fall, teams were also rolled out in St. Paul and Coaldale, with more recent expansions over the past few weeks and months including Hinton and Athabasca with plans to soon include Gleichen and eventually reach Wainwright and High Level.
The goal for the RCMP’s April-to-April 2023 fiscal year “is to double up all of these teams to have more coverage,” said Bibeau, adding mental health-related calls have been increasing over the span of many years.
“It’s a priority for the RCMP and AHS to establish these teams,” he said.
Bibeau spoke with the Albertan on Feb. 16 at the Sundre RCMP detachment alongside his colleagues Const. Jordan Wight and Lisa Brown, a registered psychiatric nurse (RPN), who both make up the team based in Rocky Mountain House.
“I think it’s been quite a positive first year,” said Brown. “Initially, it was kind of making our presence known within the detachments, because we do get a lot of referrals; that’s where a lot of our work comes from.”
While the two-person team endeavours to respond to unfolding situations when possible, they are not always on shift. In those instances, responding Mounties can send along a referral or even questions for the pair to follow up on, she said.
“Right now, we are not 24-7,” said Wight. “Part of being a new program is collecting all the stats and everything just to see where we’re at.”
Asked about how many calls the team has responded to on average during a given month, the constable said the volume fluctuates.
“Some days, we have zero referrals or zero calls to go to,” he said. “But then, we’ve had days where we have eight to go to.”
Part of the educational component of raising awareness at individual detachments throughout the province has been training Mounties to lean on the new resource that’s now available to them, he said.
“Our goal is to stabilize people in the community. We don’t always want to have to take them to hospital or do the drastic measures,” he said. “Sometimes, people just need help so that they can live their lives better.”
Referrals enable the unit to take more time during a follow up as opposed to rushing around immediately responding to calls as they came in, he said.
“When we’re with that person, we can devote our 100 per cent attention to them and then discuss what’s going on right now in their lives and what kind of supports they could benefit from,” he said.
“Sometimes it’s just education, because people know that they need help (but) they don’t know what help is available. We’re able to kind of point them in the right direction.”
Statistically speaking, it’s not uncommon for detachments throughout Alberta to regularly respond to recurring mental health calls from the same residence, he said.
“So it’s how do you break that cycle,” he said.
Responding to a question about whether the team had so far experienced some success stories such as someone coming back from a mental health crisis to securing stable employment, Wight spoke about a person who had become known to his detachment after numerous interactions with police. Following ongoing intervention from RPACT, the number of calls pertaining to that specific person plummeted, he said.
“There’s one individual outside of Rocky who was well known to the detachment and constantly calling in. It took multiple follow-up attempts, but we were finally able to divert them into and get them the supports they need in the community. That seems to have been quite successful,” he said. “Because it’s been quite some time since they’ve called in or been in crisis.”
Brown brought up another individual from the Sundre area who every few months would also regularly pop up on their radar. Recalling their first encounter, she said this person was “very standoffish” and “very paranoid,” going so far as to audio record the entire initial meeting that lasted about an hour.
“It was pretty bad at first,” she said, later adding when asked that the nature of that file involved both addictions and domestic issues.
“(But) our most recent interaction was quite positive,” she said, adding the individual no longer brings out an audio recorder and shares more openly than before.
“We’ve been able to build that trust and that rapport. So I think that’s been positive.”
She added that connecting police officers with access to mental health specialists also further enables her to book follow-up appointments with a therapist or addiction counsellor for people in crisis.
“Addictions are quite prominent in a lot of our calls,” she said.
Bibeau agreed that as keepers of the peace, police officers are not necessarily experts in the field of mental health and that having access to specialists has helped fill a gap.
“We bring two services together, and then two different knowledge bases together,” the corporal said.
Due to the nature of police work when officers are called to respond during a time of crisis, “we usually see people on their worst day,” Bibeau said.
“Not every intervention means arrest,” he said. “We’re going to give them the help that they need on the mental health side.”
However, he recognized there are occasions when police need to apprehend a person in distress and bring them to a doctor at the hospital or another designated facility.
From April 2022 to early February 2023, he said the team in Rocky logged 415 mental health related calls including: 56 in Sundre wherein RPACT was involved 11 times resulting in two apprehensions and subsequent conveyances to hospital; 141 calls in Olds wherein RPACT was involved 23 times resulting in two apprehensions; as well as 148 calls in Didsbury wherein the team was involved nine times resulting in one apprehension.
Provincewide, there were 22,723 calls last year related to the Mental Health Act, he said.
Providing a further breakdown, the corporal added that out of all those calls, 1,794 – or about 7.9 per cent – involved an apprehension, and that from the calls that involved an apprehension, 46 – or 2.6 per cent – involved a reportable use of force.
“Most of the calls that we’re going to, is to provide help,” Bibeau said. “I’ve seen some people that we went to talk to and there’s a clinic a few blocks down the road, but they’re not even aware of it.”
Providing that help in the short-term is essentially a preventative measure that by extension offers long-term benefits such as decreased call volumes for both police as well as AHS, which can also translate to a reduced burden on emergency rooms.
“Nowadays, you don’t even need to go into a physical building if you don’t want to,” said Wight. “There’s a lot of call lines and different supports that way as well.”
Responding to a follow-up question about available resources or referral services for mental health where someone can speak with a professional without being concerned about receiving an eye-popping bill that serves only to exacerbate the person’s anxiety, he said, “It’s covered. If you have your health-care card, you’re good to go.”
Brown highlighted two 24-7 helplines that are available provincewide: Addictions Help Line at 1-866-332-2322 as well as the Mental Health Help Line at 1-877-303-2642.
She also mentioned the Access Addiction and Mental Health Intake line, 1-888-594-0211, that people can call to book an appointment with an AHS mental health therapist or addiction counsellor in Sundre.
Looking forward, Bibeau said the plan is to continue growing the program, whether by expanding into areas currently not covered or doubling up teams in areas with higher call volumes.
