Appropriate Responses Initiative
Not all 911 calls are the same. When you call for help, sometimes a traditional public safety response is best. Other times a mental health professional, a public health worker, or community partner would be a more appropriate response.
Launched in 2022, the Appropriate Response Initiative is intended to enhance 911 responses in Ramsey County by focusing on resident well-being and community. The initiative will help build safer communities, prevent violence and reduce disparities by investing in a wider range of response options for people in need. Expanded response options will include additional social services crisis response, public health response and new community responders.
Ramsey County is currently working closely with community members and agency leaders to transform and co-design our 911 response. Together we’re determining how to use existing response resources, identify alternatives and build additional resources to better meet the needs of the communities we serve.
View community committee and system partners
Ramsey County will invest up to $13.2 million of the county’s American Rescue Plan Act funds into the initiative from 2022-2024. These investments will establish us as a responsive leader in 911 services locally and nationally.
Goals
Goals include:
- Expanding 911 Emergency Communications Center dispatch protocols to use a broader range of options, including new emergency response models. This includes embedded Social Workers into our dispatch center to provide additional support for mental health calls.
- Transforming public wellness systems – such as Public Health and Social Services – to help callers in collaboration with public safety agencies, when appropriate, and without public safety personnel when it is safe to do so.
- Transforming community institutions to provide proactive and dispatched responses to community members.
Response types
- Non-traditional response – Calls where wellness system and community institutions can respond without the need for dispatching public safety personnel.
- Crisis/Behavioral Health Response – includes adult and children mental health.
- Example call type: Mental health crisis without risk of violence or a person experiencing homelessness.
- Public Health Response - substance-use related.
- Example call type: Drug use or overuse calls that are not life threatening.
- Community Response – Community only response that is both dispatched and preventative. Community responders will be recognizable in their communities with deep connections, life experiences and, in some cases, professional certification or education.
- Example call type: Kids playing loudly in a park or loitering.
- Crisis/Behavioral Health Response – includes adult and children mental health.
- Traditional response - Law Enforcement, Fire, Emergency Medical Services
- Co-Response - including any combination of non-traditional responses and traditional response. Responders will partner together to coordinate a response most appropriate to the information available at the time of dispatch and the needs of the individuals requesting service.
- Example call type: Parent/child dispute with history of violence.
Timeline
- Summer 2023 – Embedded Social Workers staffed in the Emergency Communications Center
- Winter/Spring 2024—Public Health Response phased roll-out starts
- Spring 2024—Open solicitation for Community Responders
Background and racial disparities
The Appropriate Response Initiative will shift the responsibility for violence prevention and safety from being primarily a law enforcement responsibility to becoming a partnership involving communities most impacted by violence. Traditional law enforcement and public safety services will still be available and used when appropriate to assist when there is an urgent health and safety risk.
Current disparities
Black and American Indian residents in Ramsey County face significant disparities across life outcomes, including rates of arrest and incarceration. This initiative seeks to disrupt these disparities by bringing together countywide stakeholders to find new ways to keep neighborhoods safe, disrupt pathways to incarceration, empower community members and invest in community-led organizations. Through the co-design process, community members will help reimagine structures, operations and outcomes.
Additional resources
- Ramsey County Board Workshop: Appropriate Responses Initiative (June 4, 2024)
- Ramsey County Board Workshop: American Rescue Plan Act Funds for Violence Prevention (Nov. 9. 2021)
- Ramsey County Advancing Racial Equity Policy Statement
- Ramsey County arrest data - 2016-2019
- Ramsey County adds 40 positions dedicated to violence prevention (Star Tribune, Dec. 21, 2021)
- New team of 911 responders in works as Ramsey County plans overhaul (Star Tribune, Oct. 23, 2021)
- Mental health worker to partner with Maplewood police (Star Tribune, Feb. 2, 2021)
- Ramsey County tries new approach for some 911 crisis calls (Pioneer Press, Feb. 29, 2016)
News
Newly-Remodeled Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center Embeds Social Workers at the Center
May 17, 2024
“We heard from community members that the current traditional responses that we had of police, fire and emergency medical services weren’t meeting all of the needs that they were seeing,” said Integrated Health and Justice Administrator Jenn Hamrick. “We’re creating new resources to be able to provide support to people when they call 911 to meet the complex needs we know people have.”
The change was needed to better meet the needs of community and rising demand for crisis services. In 2016 the number of calls transferred from 911 to crisis teams was approximately 263. In 2023, that number increased to 3,491 calls transferred.
Today, the county offers an enhanced Mental Health Crisis Response and Public Health Response in addition to traditional law enforcement and emergency medical responses to 911 callers. The Mental Health Crisis Response includes four embedded social workers in the Emergency Communications Center collaborating with call takers and dispatchers. Non-emergency and 911 calls that are mental health or substance use related are transferred to the Embedded Social Work team so that callers can be provided with appropriate resources.
Paul & Sheila Wellstone Award for Social Justice
April 16, 2024
The Appropriate Response Initiative team was been selected as the recipient of the National Association of Social Workers Minnesota Chapter prestigious Paul & Sheila Wellstone Award for Social Justice. This award is a testament to the tireless dedication and innovative efforts to create a 9-1-1 system with more robust options to meet the diverse needs of the Ramsey County community. ARI's intentional focus on serving the needs of Black and American Indian communities exemplifies the commitment to equity and social justice.
This award is for the entire team of Ramsey County employees and community members that is working to design, implement, and evaluate the Appropriate Responses Initiative (ARI). With the 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Center (ECC) as the intervention point to get wellness and community centered services, ARI enhances ECC protocols, public wellness systems (Social Services and Public Health) and community institutions to provide a wider range of options for responding to people in need. Transforming a system like this one is not easy, and although there are challenges along the way this team continues to show up, work through challenges, and dismantle barriers standing in the way of centering community and wellness in the justice system. With an intentional focus on Black and American Indian communities this team is leading the way for how local governments can center racial equity, and share power with community.