CESSA - Region 4 Committee Meeting Approved Minutes 12/19/2023

Community Emergency Services and Support Act (CESSA) Region 4 Advisory Committee

Meeting Minutes- Tuesday, December 19, 2023 - 10:00-11:30 via Zoom

Meeting Minutes - Approved by Members 01/16/2024

  • Welcome & Call to Order - CESSA Region 4 Advisory Membership Committee
    • Julie Brugger (Co-Chair) called the meeting to order at 10:10 am
  • Attendees: Julie, Brugger, Deborah Humphrey, Kelly Ann Jefferson, and Randy Randolph
  • Absent - Jeff Schafer, Breona Hawkins, Jane Nesbit, Megan Black, Layla Simons, Timothy S. McClain, Steven G. Johnson, Dave Fellows, Joseph J. Harper, Brittany Pinnon-Becker, Cindy Wagner, and James Hengehold
    • State representative: Brenda Hampton - UIC (HUB)
  • Open Meetings Act
    • Julie Brugger reviewed the Illinois Open Meetings Act.
  • Approval of the Minutes from the previous meeting
    • There were not enough Members in attendance to approve the November minutes.
  • State Updates: Brenda Hampton
    • 988-work group was designed to propose ideas to the General Assembly on the Continuation of the Crisis Continuum of Care and to give a voice to the needs in this Crisis Continuum of Care. The action plans have been completed. They were voted on last week and the final document will be going to the General Assembly at the end of this month.
  • Strengthening and Transforming the Crisis Care Continuum, it is looking at alignment and continuity of different funding streams across the state. HFS has what they call a Mobile Crisis Response Crisis process. DMH has a Mobile Crisis Response Team Service process. The intent is to get services and functions aligned that have similarities, so it would not be confusing for providers and the public. This group is convened by the office of Medicaid, Medicaid Innovations; its whole intent is to align the services that are funded in the state of Illinois. The quarterly accessory report that is due to the General Assembly by the end of this month has been completed and it is on its way.
  • RAC Project Plan Presentation- Julie Brugger
    • RAC Project Plan - We want to continue to work on meeting with our PSAP partners whose coverage areas overlap with the 590 programs to communicate the goal of moving our low-risk callers out of the 911 system into the 988 system; to inform about the services that are available in the expected response times for mobile crisis response in the community. We want to make everyone aware of what services are available and to get a realistic expectation of how to access those things. Once the PSAPs in our region have been identified to begin changing protocols, I will reach out to leadership in those departments to offer support for that process. When a timeline has been set for implementation of new protocols, we will work with leadership to set monthly meetings with our Ambassadors for Change and the PSAPS working groups to focus on problem solving, performance review and improvement opportunities as time goes on.
  • The Standards and Protocols Committee- has begun working with Power Phone to change those protocols and they have started to identify changing protocols for calls that come in to 911 specifically about disorderly conduct and trespass. They are also considering the following types of calls for potential protocols' changes, and those include assault and rape, cold exposure, domestic disturbance, a lost or found person, people calling in about mental health, public indecency, a sick person, a suspicious person or a suspicious vehicle, and welfare checks.
  • Technology Sub-Committees- they are working on developing operational procedures for communicating between 911 and 988 and between 988 and the Mobile Crisis Response Teams.
  • The Training Subcommittee- a training plan underway for the 590 programs. The training plan is complete for 911 and they have identified training courses for 988. They are working hard too, in terms of making sure that everyone is on the same page and making sure that we are all moving in the direction to conduct CESSA in the way that adequately serves all the members of our community and gives everybody access to crisis services. You have recently received revised Illinois Interim risk level Matrix. We are going to work with this particular risk level matrix and see how the changes in protocols go. If we and the State recognize that more changes are needed, they will be made in the future.
  • Revised Illinois Interim Risk Level Matrix- We are going to work with this particular risk level matrix and see how the changes in protocols go and be able to utilize this one. If the state recognizes that more changes are needed, they will make those in the future.
  • Low Risk (Level 1) to Health or Safety - Level 1 callers or situations, these are the ones that the changes are beginning. Because this is the piece that we feel like we can really begin to make these changes to go through now. Over the course of time as the state begins to work with those vendors of the computer aided dispatch systems regarding the protocols they're starting with these low risk ones, but they're going to be working toward protocols that will encompass a lot of the calls about people needing community members needing behavioral health services in the community. The idea is that we will remove the low-risk callers out of 911 into 988 so that they can still get the help that they need, but not go through that 911 system. Because as we know over the course of time, what we have been able to identify is that there is a separate set of responses that can happen for these, especially for these low-risk ones that that does not require law enforcement because there is a low risk to health or safety. This could be managed through 988 and through our MCRT because it Is a lower risk level. Obviously, what everybody wants is for crisis services to be able to happen seamlessly for all our community members whenever they need them. While we continue to work toward that, this is absolutely one of the ways that that we are addressing the needs in the community and how we can best meet those.
  • Next Steps- we have communication work to do, reaching out to our community stakeholders, as well as the other members of our regional advisory committee and all the other behavioral health stakeholders. Through our alliances and through our community engagement efforts with each of the roles that we provide professionally. It is about communicating what steps we are taking toward improving these crisis services and then working specifically with our public safety answering points to make sure that everybody is aware of what all services are available in every area and how to access them. It is also looking at making sure that people know about 988, that the service is there and that they can help and that those services are confidential and that they have access to knowing what is available in each of our locations in terms of you know throughout the entire state. Eventually in our area it will be supporting those changes to the computer-aided dispatch protocols that the state will shepherd as they are working with the different computer aided dispatch systems and making sure that everybody stays on that same page. Communication is giant in terms of next steps and what other ideas for steps are needed and how can we work together with the point where we are in our area to continue this process moving forward. Strengthening relationships and getting to know each other and sharing information about how we all serve our community is huge.
  • Comment:
    • Deborah Humphrey - we just did a radio interview yesterday with Riverbender radio station on teen mental health. They are really interested in any mental health type of work. We have talked about other mental health issues and referenced 988 yesterday a bit in the interview. BGZ, the Big Z, have done features on mental health with us as well.
  • Questions:
    • Deborah Humphrey- on both the revised interim risk and the urgent, there are three or four different potential responses. Options are law enforcement, Co-response team or Mobile Crisis Response Teams, who determines? Per the list, it is not clear. It looks as if anybody can still respond at any time to any of these?
  • Julie Brugger- this is because there is differing availability throughout the state. Example, there are Co-response teams where there is a behavioral health person embedded with law enforcement, they can manage an immediate kind of response time with that response type. Also, if you have law enforcement then the risk to health or safety can be mitigated by the law enforcement. If the Crisis Team is embedded with law enforcement, they would be able to respond at once because they would go with law enforcement, actively in the in the same vehicle. The menu of dispatch response types has to do with what is available in what area. If the crisis response team cannot get there that quickly then EMS and law enforcement get there first and MCRT comes as soon as they can get there.
  • Deborah Humphrey- The State is giving this menu and then each locality is defining specifically how they would work? This defines how they work based on availability of resources? Are there other districts that that are working in the same way that are outlining things at this point?
  • Julie Brugger- like Clinton County, there is good cooperation between their public safety answering points, their 911 answerers and their mobile crisis response team. They have effective communication going on and they are aware of how each helps the community and how to depend on each other to create that. I think as we continue to develop those relationships that becomes extremely important because as we look to changing any kind of protocols and changing expectations on a public type of forum, the first thing we've got to identify is where are the services and how do we access them and what can we count on each other to do.
  • Next Meeting Date: January 16, 2023
  • Public Comment
  • Nowack- do we know what kind of data there is mental health calls coming in 911 still versus going to 988 in our region? We are running right around 46,000 calls a year; we will most likely reach 47,000 in 2023 with only a week and a half left of the year. The percentage from the last two years has inclined dramatically; the numbers have gone from 11% to around 29% right now and a huge increase of 911 is still being used. Does the State have data being collected to know the 988 is deflecting some of the calls out of 911?
  • Randy Randolph- this is difficult for us because we don't capture the end result like the EMS agencies do as well as the police departments do. If they go out, they have their own UCR codes and such, and how they classify their calls for service. We don't get that, that feedback doesn't come to us. Hopefully at least, this gives us some more understanding as to how this process works. If there's ever an expectation that we provide some type of data, we understand that there's limitations to how we can give that to you.
  • Gilbert- I think this also shows that we as EMS systems, we need to work with our PSAPs because we have that destination data, the missing data that that you're missing.
  • Randy Randolph- Our situation is different. CENCOM East and CENCOM West are in a different situation than O'Fallon PD and Belleville PD. Belleville PD, PSAPs dispatch for Swansea police as well as for Belleville police. They get all the information from start to finish; we do not. We dispatch for 74 different agencies. It's just not even possible to gather all of that data and enter it once again to share how the call went. We're up to 159,937 incidents for the year, 2023.
  • Gilbert- it seems we are not getting good participation from our voting members. How do we fix that or how do we get people that are attending the meetings that are present and actively working with this and trying to get this information? How do we get them as voting members if our voting members are not showing up to vote? Do potential members have to go through the entire process to get approval from the state to be a committee member?
  • Brenda Hampton- Each RAC Committee member receives an appointment letter, so they have a survey. They complete the survey that is vetted within DMH, then the individual will get an appointment letter that makes them an official RAC member. It is a quick process; we can get people appointed now within 24 hours. If there are individuals on your roster who still are not taking part as they need to so that you can have a quorum to do business, consider making changes.
  • Julie Brugger- This has been a difficult issue. This will be something that I'm going to put on our reporting form to the state; that this continues to be an issue for our regional advisory committee to move forward in terms of having a quorum and being able complete these different things. I will reach out to EMS medical directors and let them know how much we need them in this committee. I'll also reach out to the other committee members to see if we can make any headway on increasing attendance. I can certainly reach out to the state for some new members and trade out some of the ones who aren't able to join us routinely.
  • RAC $ Zoom meeting dates for the Calendar year 2024:
    • January 16, 2024; 10:00 am-11:30 am
    • February 20, 2024; 10:00 am-11:30 am
    • March 19, 2024; 10:00 am-11:30 am
    • April 16, 2024; 10:00 am-11:30 am
    • May 21, 2024; 10:00 am-11:30 am
    • June 18, 2024; 10:00 am-11:30 am
  • Adjournment -Not enough Members in attendance for Motion to Adjourn