Mental health nurses partner with police in Geraldton crisis co-response trial

Mental health nurses will soon join police officers in Geraldton on emergency call-outs as part of a groundbreaking regional trial to help people during mental health crises. The Geraldton Guardian can reveal Geraldton and Bunbury have been selected to take part in a two-year pilot program offering specialist care after an “immensely successful” introduction of the Police Mental Health Co-Response program in Perth in 2016. Geraldton officer-in-charge Sen. Sgt Chris Martin described the trial as “very exciting” for local policing, saying officers were often expected to fill the role of primary responders during psychiatric incidents. “Police officers are not mental health practitioners, but sometimes expectations are placed on us to fill that role,” he said. “So we’ve reached out to Health to partner with us and they’ve jumped on board.” Mental health experts will embedded with officers when conducting welfare checks and in other incidents to guide and support their response to mental health issues. Sen. Sgt Martin said calls to attend incidents where people were displaying acute mental health issues were a weekly occurrence for Geraldton officers, who often found themselves “tied up” at the hospital for hours on end. “We need to balance that against the other demands of the community, so it’s about streamlining that process and making sure those individuals get the best treatment as quickly as possible,” he said. “It streamlines the requirement of the Mental Health Act, but more importantly it looks after that person from the minute we have that first interaction.” In September, 17 officers at the Geraldton Police Station will undergo specialist mental health training which will empower them to make assessments of people’s mental health status. Sen. Sgt Martin said the program was expected to be rolled out before the end of the year, although police were still discussing the capabilities and implementation process with the Department of Health. The two-year trial in Perth was launched in response after police attended almost 19,000 incidents with a mental health element in 2015 and analysis found it helped mentally ill people get better treatment and saved police time. The program was expanded in 2018 to four districts across Perth after a review of the first-of-its-kind Australian trial found it was “very successful” in addressing the growing number of mental health incidents. A WA Country Health Service spokeswoman said the finer details of the trial were still being worked out, but they hoped to deliver a similar program in the Mid West. “Following the success of a mental health emergency response trial program in the metro area, the WA Country Health Service will be working with WA Police to deliver a similar program,” she said.