The City of Lima and Coleman Health Services are teaming up to provide immediate services for individuals dealing with mental and behavioral health issues.
The formation of the “Emergency Response Mental Health Collaborative” was announced today at Mayor David Berger’s weekly news briefing. It will enable first responders to call out a crisis counselor to respond on scene to assist in situations where a person is showing mental health needs. This is a growing issue with calls for service that the Lima Police Department and EMS responders are facing. By having a mental health professional there on-site many situations could be handled without further issues.
Margaret Lawrence is the Chief Officer with Coleman Health Services and says they will be starting training soon. “We will be doing ride alongs right now with law enforcement and EMS to kind of see through their eyes what they’re seeing. We will also be doing extra mental health and SUD training for our staff as well as any type of training that we can do together. Our Mental Health Board is supporting the training needs so we’re going to work through this together to see what all is needed for a team approach.”
Lima Police Chief Kevin Martin adds, “This ultimately is going to be something that’s going to be in pace 24 hours a day 7 days a week. So anytime a person may be in crisis it won’t be a matter of somebody going out following up later. They will be able to arrive at the scene at the point in time that the officer and EMS personnel are having contact with the person needing services.”
Coleman is now hiring Crisis Counselors and Recovery Coaches to be on the team. If interested, you can contact them for more information.
