On Monday, Durham city officials expanded its mental health crisis response services program citywide.
The HEART Program, which first began as a pilot for a third of the city, stands for “Holistic, Empathetic, Assistance Response Teams.” The program is aimed at helping people with behavioral health problems and sends social workers or peer support specialists to certain calls, instead of the police.
The program previously had four crisis units that were only available to a part of Durham. Three of the four units were also only offered 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. That has since been expanded to 12 hours a day, 365 days a year. The HEART Program’s director Ryan Smith said they were able to expand for several reasons.
“Over our first 16 months, we have amazing people who make up, make up the heart team who have been doing the work,” he said. “And we have a very transparent dashboard for listeners out there who really want to see what we've been doing.”
With the new expansion, Smith said the HEART Program will be able to take 13,000 more calls, on top of the 9,000 they have taken in the last 16 months. Due to the new city’s budget, the HEART Program has added 19 additional positions and now has 50 employees.
The program already allows law enforcement to focus more on criminal activity, and with HEART being expanded, officials expect that bandwidth to increase, Smith said.
“We saved law enforcement over 1,400 hours of response time that frees up law enforcement again to be available for other higher priority calls,” said Smith.
According to the HEART Program’s dashboard, 99% of the program’s responders said they felt safe during encounters.