On Aug. 1-2, the city of Warsaw CARES (Community Assistance Resources Emergency Services) will host a crisis response training for law enforcement.
CARES Director Chris Fancil told the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Board Wednesday that it is a “crash course in how to deal with mental health responses and how they’re going to approach those people and how to interact with them.”
The goal is that after they do this two-day course, later on this year or after the first of the year in 2024, they’ll do a full 40-hour crisis intervention training, which is a law enforcement certification course.
“We will be the host for it, is our goal. We’re not eligible to be CIT-certified because we’re not law enforcement, but we’ve worked with local law enforcement to try to get some of their folks certified better to deal with those situations,” Fancil said. “Some counties have adopted that as a specialized training for some of their officers to respond to mental health calls. It should be good. We’re looking forward to it.”
According to the CARES newsletter, topics will include de-escalation skills, laws associated with 24-hour detentions and resources available in Warsaw and Kosciusko County. Trainees will meet mental health professionals, hospital staff, individuals living with mental health conditions and other helpers in the community through classroom instruction and a site visit.
For questions, call CARES at 574-453-7901.
CARES is a program that addresses those suffering a mental health crisis, assists those who are having issues acquiring or reconciling medications and aid in getting appropriate medical care, according to the city of Warsaw website. Continual services also are provided for home safety assessments, emergency housing needs assistance, uninjured fall assistance, general health assessments and resources allocation for residents.
Fancil also told the board that CARES was notified that they were awarded matching funds from the national opioid settlement. The grants were announced June 13 by the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration’s Division of Mental Health and Addiction.
“We asked if we could apply. We were in a crunch when we did it. We didn’t know what the numbers looked like. We applied for $137,816, and we were actually awarded $376,231,” he said. “We’re still working with FSSA to figure out what that looks like, what that money is going to be used for. We have not received a contract yet. Certainly, as soon as we do, you’ll be aware of that, (fire territory attorney) Andrew (Grossnickle) will be aware of that as well just to make sure we’re following the rules as we go down that road.”
He said he was pretty excited what that all means but they don’t have the contract yet to look at.
Mayor Joe Thallemer said he thought it was important to note that they received about 2-1/2 times more than what they asked for.
“I said, ‘why?’ You said, ‘because they like our program.’ So, that’s testimony to how far we’ve come in such a short time,” Thallemer said.
Thallemer brought the CARES program to the fire territory two to three years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The fire territory also received a $3,000 grant from the Kosciusko REMC Operation Round Up Fund, a component fund of the Kosciusko County Community Foundation Inc.
Miles Waters, firefighter, told the board Wednesday that they applied for the grant and were awarded it. He asked the board for permission to accept the funds.
The money will be used for the purchase of eight Reveal Fire Pro X thermal imaging cameras.
Waters said he received a quote for the eight cameras with the keepers on them. The quote is for $4,271.92 from Municipal Emergency Services, so the fire department will pay $1,271 of that cost.
Fire Chief Brian Mayo said, “This can’t be understated how much this puts us in the positive for safety to put a thermal imaging camera on each person on each fire truck we have. So, the company officer will obviously have the bigger, more in-detail, technologically advanced one, but every riding seat will actually have one.”
He said it was a game changer.
“It’s pretty amazing,” said board member Brandon Schmitt.
The board approved the acceptance of the grant.
In other business:
• In her monthly Lutheran EMS report, Alicia Mediano, director of operation clinical management for Lutheran EMS, pointed out a “huge uptick” under total encounters when one compares April (411) to May (457).
“We see that continue to climb, in fact, even into the month of June. That’s not something that is new to us. We’re used to the numbers, as we get into the summer months, continue to climb. Numbers in the community are going to climb, the people are out and about and things - traumas, things like that - routinely, we see that number go up” during the summer, she said.
One thing the EMS did see in May was an increase in respiratory emergencies, Mediano stated, which is something they don’t often see. They also saw an increase in psychiatric emergency numbers as they doubled from the first quarter of the year to the second quarter.
• Mayo provided the monthly fire activity report for May, noting that there were 286 calls for May, with 101 incidents (35.31%) overlapping. He said that number of overlapping calls was even up from the previous month and they are continuing to trend that way.
“So, just ever mindful of our services are more and more demand and more and more in getting creative on how to answer those calls when we’re already out on calls,” Mayo said.
Thallemer asked Mayo if he anticipated the fire department’s call volume to increase seasonally, similar to what the EMS sees.
“It is, traditionally - June, July, August, September are always busy. Then it seems like when school goes back in, for some reason, things tend to ... settle a little bit,” Mayo responded.
• Fancil provided figures for June for CARES.
He said they had six mental health service navigation consultations, some of which take “quite a while.” They’re still seeing more law enforcement referrals, as well as engine crew referrals as they go out on calls.
Total CARES interactions for June were 35.