The City of LA, County is introducing a pilot program that sends psychiatric workers to 911 calls

In a downtown industrial corner on the Los Angeles River, a mental health team drove around in search of a man described only as wearing a blue shirt.

Rafael Arias Delgado, 34, a psychiatric technician strapped into a back seat, gave the location to his teammates up front.

“It’s at the end of Banning Street,” he shouted.

The trio were among two dozen health care workers who attended a mock training session on Thursday to practice engaging mentally ill people in crisis situations who need treatment. In this case, the man in the blue shirt was a fireman playing a role. The exercise came as city and county officials converged near Los Angeles Fire Station No. 4 to announce the start of a pilot program for trained workers like Delgado to replace law enforcement personnel to respond to nonviolent emergency calls.

Officials say the therapeutic transport program will be on call 24 hours a day and will connect people to mental health services. The idea of ​​the program is to reduce hospital overcrowding and allow police and firefighters to respond to calls for which they are best suited.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the response teams are comparable to gang interventionists or suicide prevention and sexual abuse response teams who work with authorities.

“We know that mental health is best managed by mental health professionals,” he said. “Often seeing a badge can trigger people’s trauma even more.”

Getting long-term care for the mentally ill is a challenge in LA and the region; They often cycle through hospitals, psychiatric hospitals and prisons before they end up back on the street. In the worst case, there are deadly encounters with the police.

“It’s just not acceptable,” Garcetti said. “So the county and city came together to sharpen our pencils and say, what’s a better system?”

The City of Los Angeles has partnered with the county Department of Mental Health to start the pilot.

Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Art Tarango trains staff for the Therapeutic Transport pilot program at Fire Station No. 4 on Thursday. Staff will respond to nonviolent emergency calls involving people with mental health crises.

(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

The announcement of the program on Thursday coincided with this The unveiling of a plan by Governor Gavin Newsom Push more people with serious mental health conditions and addictions into court-ordered care that includes medication and shelter.

The plan calls for all 58 counties in the state to participate in the program through their civil courts. Local governments would face sanctions if they failed to meet the requirements.

With that in mind, city and county officials say the therapeutic transport program has already shown promising results.

In the first month, Garcetti said psychiatric workers responded to 113 calls, about 20% of those calls ended in someone being treated at the scene and discharged. About 13% of those calls resulted in patients being admitted to the hospital — an 80% decrease from similar calls in the past, easing the pressure on congested emergency rooms. The remainder of the calls, the vast majority, resulted in patients being transferred to alternative medical care facilities such as psychiatric hospitals or drug treatment centers.

The mental health mobile response program will eventually include delivery vans for each of the five county oversight districts. The next team is scheduled to operate out of LAFD’s No. 59 Fire Station in West Los Angeles this weekend.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph Terraza said 911 dispatchers receive about 50,000 “psychological calls” to the LAPD and LAFD.

“With this innovative resource, we can now provide better care for the mentally ill,” he said. “We can reduce the time our paramedics wait in emergency rooms for an available bed, we can help reduce hospital overcrowding.”

Although the results are early, he said the therapeutic van has been shown to transport patients nearly 70% of the time, freeing paramedics from the scene.

“It’s going to be a really good thing,” he said.