County wins grant for mental health team

The Young County Sheriff ’s Office won a $400,000 grant to create a mental health rapid response team, County Judge Win Graham announced late last week.

The grant will provide funding for mental health response and crisis training for the Sheriff ’s Office, and the Graham and Olney Police Departments and will fund round-the-clock nursing coverage at the County Jail, Judge Graham said.

The funding will allow the County to respond to mental health crises with a team consisting of a peace officer, nurse, and social worker who will assess the patient using an iPad in a telemedicine setup, he said.

“There is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a HUGE step for Young County to improve the mental health of our citizens,” he said in a Facebook post The plan is a scaleddown version of a $1.6 million, two-year plan to provide mobile mental health services to County residents that was put forth by local leaders during the 88th Legislative session.

Olney Police Chief Dan Birbeck led that effort by lobbying the state Legislature as well as the County Commissioners, the Olney and Graham City Councils and by designing plans for a mobile mental health team to provide continuing care for patients in Young County.

“I commend Young County officials for their efforts and willingness to step outside the norm to address the mental health crisis,” he said of the grant. “The addition of training and staff is a positive move, and while conducting evaluations via iPad isn’t ideal, it’s certainly better than the alternatives we’ve had. The ultimate goal is still to establish a proactive mental health team that provides care directly in the community, and we plan to re-address this in the next legislative session to secure the necessary funding.”

The original plan envisioned creating teams consisting of a mental health-trained peace officer, a mental health worker and a nurse or emergency medical technician to respond to crises and to provide in-home continuing care for residents needing mental health support.

The proposal was not eligible for a grant from $30-million set aside by the Texas Legislature last year for mental health care for families because the program excluded funding law enforcement, officials said.

The addition of two nurses will streamline the crisis evaluation process and allow for immediate psychiatric first aid in all areas of the County and cities and this jail, the grant application said.

The grant also would fund two vehicles that would be “strategically placed” in the County to allow nurses and other members of the team to quickly respond to an incident, the application said.

It also would fund de-escalation and crisis training for 24 sworn officers, 20 jailers, nine dispatchers, three nurses and one school resource officer in the cities of Graham and Olney and Young County.