HAMPSHIRE COUNTY – The Easthampton and Hadley Police Departments have announced the addition of co-responding mental health clinicians as a full-time resource in assisting the police departments in de-escalation scenes.

Nonprofit community behavioral health agency Clinical & Support Options (CSO) signed formal Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with both departments.

Under the agreement, CSO will provided one full-time Masters-level clinician and 24/7 backup “to assist in support to individuals in the community who need mental health and or substance use services.”

The pilot program will operate for one year unless or until it is extended, something both departments are very much interested in. The joint application from the two departments to the Mass. Dept. of Mental Health is for a grant that would further fund the program as a “Jail Diversion” effort.

In a world where uniformed police evoke so many different emotions among people, a trained clinician reporting with officers to certain scenes will ease any tensions once deemed safe for them to step in, according to officials.

“Co-response is about responsibility and accountability to the community, family members and those in need of mental health services,” said Easthampton Chief of Police Robert Alberti in a press release. “Our co-response promotes education, sensitivity, understanding and the continued building of community partnerships here in Easthampton.”

In the same release, Hadley Police Chief Michael Mason had nothing but positive things to say about the implementation of the program.

“Many of the officers from both our agencies are trained and certified in crisis intervention but an embedded clinician, like Emma (Reilly, CSO Mental health clinician), adds yet another layer of assistance and trust that we feel our communities want and need. We could not be happier with the success of the program so far, and we hope to build upon it into the future,” Mason said.

Working directly with both police departments since mid-September from CSO is co-response clinician Emma Reilly. When called upon during her full-time duty alongside the departments, the regional co-response clinician will arrive to the scene with an officer to provide expertise in the areas of emotional and mental health as well as behavioral de-escalation.

“We are already reaping the benefits. Emma actually has been working with both agencies since probably mid-September. She has responded to several different calls in both of our communities,” said Mike Mason. “The calls that she’s going on are actually turning out to be more wide ranging than we initially thought.”

Mason said expectations were that Reilly would mainly be working on mental health and substance abuse calls, but it has worked out where she has been responding to a multitude of different calls where de-escalation would be beneficial. With it being difficult for officers to ascertain what is the situation they are heading into, Reilly has been able to help close that gap with the ability to work with people on the scene of a call in keeping things from escalating.

“She’s becoming even more valuable in situations where we never really thought she would be. She and CSO as well have suggested she can help us with death notification calls and consoling folks more effectively than an on-duty police officer might be able to,” Mason said.

CSO has been committed to provide open access to a broad range of support services including community programs, crisis stabilization, family support services, mental health and recovery, and housing and homelessness. The work done by the group made them a perfect fit for the departments in making an effort to improve this aspect of the job.

“As an agency, we’ve been focused on co response and de-escalation strategies for a long time,” said CSO President & CEO Karin Jeffers in a press release. “We work very closely and very well with our region’s police departments. Having formal agreements and working relationships in place only furthers our mutual value of and progression toward community policing methods.”

Bringing new methods to the police regarding de-escalation seems to be a growing trend and more and more important by the day in terms of holding up Police-Community relationships. Mason said soon all officers will have been trained in crisis intervention and dispatchers will also be taking a similar training.

“We are lucky that in Easthampton and Hadley, our officers do an extremely good job at de-escalating these types of situations,” Mason said. “But we recognize that there are folks out there that not only have a higher level of training in dealing with these situations, but also sometimes just the sight of a uniformed police officer is enough to make people tense. The idea is to make sure there is an officer there to make sure Emma is safe, and then once we can reasonably assume that has occurred, the officer really kind of removes themselves from the situation and allows Emma to utilize the skills and experience she has to continue to de-escalate the call.”

Overseeing CSO’s co-response efforts is CSO Vice President of Acute and Day Programs Jennifer LaRoche, who said that the response has already been positive.

“We’ve already heard positive feedback from administration in the school departments. Sending a co-responding clinician alongside an officer improves perception on some calls. We’ve been told our new co-response team has been ‘professional, compassionate, and helpful,” said LaRoche.

Both departments have seen the positive impacts of this program and can see it in the future for departments for years to come, especially with mental health and substance abuse calls on the rise.

“Not only are we looking to implement it from here on out, but we actually believe that Easthampton and Hadley have enough of these calls to actually add to the program even before [the end of the one-year trial of program],” Mason said.