There are now two fire departments in Kitsap County taking a new approach to address the increasing amount of behavioral health-related calls. FOX13
The service is called the Community Assistance, Referral, and Education Service Program, known as the CARES Program.
"This was sort of a natural way for us to get to the root cause of the issues that were causing people to need 911 more and more frequently," said Gillanders. "Something like lack of access to medical care or lack of access to substance use disorder treatment or lack of access to mental health care. And this was just a way for us to get to the root cause of some of those problems and nip them in the bud before they became 911 issues.
"I felt, as a paramedic, that I’ve been able to just put a Band-Aid on problems. And get people to the hospital and hopefully things get fixed. And then see them the next shift and then the next shift. And so being on this team we’re actually able to follow through," said Jesse Graham, Central Kitsap CARES Team firefighter and paramedic.
"I think for a while there, there was a 911 call probably weekly for one of them having either withdrawal symptoms or intoxication symptoms. And we worked with them really extensively for about three months trying to get them connected with services, getting them into detox. And the daughter—we were able to reconnect her family back in Kansas and got her into a 30-day inpatient [care] right before she left.
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