Toronto police, 911 dispatchers need more confidence in crisis workers, advocate says

Police and emergency dispatchers need more faith in crisis workers employed through a city program that offers a non-police response to mental health needs, an advocate says. 

Jennifer Chambers, executive director of the Empowerment Council, a mental health advocacy organization funded by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, says there haven't been enough police referrals through the city's pilot program meant to divert mental health calls that don't pose a threat to the public or involve crime to non-police specialists.

Chambers serves as an advisor for the Toronto Community Crisis Service, a three-year pilot project that sends 911 and 211 mental health calls to specialized community partners in designated zones.

Although she's excited by the program's potential, Chambers says officers and emergency dispatchers should have more confidence that crisis workers — trauma-informed individuals with specialized training in areas such as de-escalation and harm reduction — can handle the matter they're called to serve.

"There is not enough referral from police to the community crisis services right now," says Chambers.

Last month, the city released a progress report based on two community partners — Gerstein Crisis Centre and TAIBU Community Health Centre — which showed that the TCCS received 549 calls from March 31 to June 18. Most of the calls — about 461 — came from 911 and 211. Mobile teams were dispatched 438 times, the report says.

The 549 figure is barely a fraction of the calls mental health centres can receive. The Gerstein centre, for example, gets 40,000 direct calls a year, though a report from Toronto police showed emergency mental health calls in their area were only diverted 211 times over a six-month period.

The TCCS pilots, which cost $2.2-million each in 2022, were implemented after several deaths of people in crisis in the Greater Toronto Area where police interaction occurred, including those of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Ejaz Choudry and D'Andre Campbell. The projects are part of a larger initiative called SafeTO, intended to address gun violence, victim support and data sharing. 

Chambers said she suspects more familiarity with calling 211 instead of 911 could speed up the "gradually evolving process" of crisis workers being able to handle more calls.

"That would be the best outcome, I think, people having a real alternative that they could call," she said, noting some people are scared to call the police when a person is in crisis. 

While some situations involving a person in crisis might be deemed unsafe to attend, Chambers suggests crisis workers could, for instance, remotely provide de-escalation advice to police.

And as much as she wants more mental health calls diverted, the matter is more complicated than that, with crisis centres facing the same staffing challenges as other health-care services. 

"So, there's some concern that if they get a huge deluge of calls that they won't be able to meet them," she says.

The Toronto Police Service receives about 33,000 mental health calls a year. Staff Supt. Randy Carter says a non-police approach to mental health calls is a learning experience that is slowly catching on, but he sees room for expansion.