Crisis Response Plan Contract, Grant Advance

The Elicker Administration’s long-delayed plans to set up a non-cop crisis response team inched forward, as committee alders endorsed a $3.5 million contract with Yale and receipt of a $2 million federal grant.

That happened during Wednesday night’s four-and-a-half-hour-long public meeting of the Board of Alders Finance Committee. 

The in-person meeting, public hearing, and budget workshop took place in the Career High School auditorium on Legion Avenue.

The committee alders unanimously recommended approval of two legislative items related to an initiative that Mayor Justin Elicker and city Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal first announced in August 2020 amidst the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

That is: a community crisis response team — now dubbed Compassionate Allies Serving our Streets, or COMPASS — that will have specially trained social workers and ​“peers with lived experience” rather than cops, firefighters, and medics respond to certain 911 calls related to homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health issues. The project’s pilot phase still does not have a start date, even though the city recently overcame the most recent cause of delays by finding a new subcontractor to oversee the team’s work in the field.

On Wednesday night, the Finance Committee alders unanimously backed a proposed contract between the city and Yale University in the amount of $3,513,842 and extending from May 1, 2022 through June 30, 2025. 

That agreement, per the title of the associated resolution, is ​“to implement the Elm City COMPASS (Compassionate Allies Serving our Streets) pilot and implementation phases.”

The committee alders also supported an order authorizing the mayor to accept a federal earmark in the amount of $2 million ​“for crisis response services.”

Both the contract and the federal-grant acceptance now move forward to the full Board of Alders for further discussion and a potential final vote.

“There’s a gap in terms of immediate response services that can be dispatched through the PSAP [Public Safety Access Point, or 911] call center,” Dalal said on Wednesday night when explaining why the Elicker Administration wants to create a new crisis response team, to be overseen by the new city Department of Community Resilience.

Pressed by East Rock Alder Anna Festa as to why the city needs to create a new municipal bureaucracy and not just rely on existing nonprofit social services, Dalal said, ​“For this type of program, it’s difficult to implement as a collaborative process [among private entities]. You really need that municipal infrastructure” to direct certain responses to certain 911 calls.

That said, Dalal and city Department of Community Resilience Acting Director Carlos Sosa-Lombardo added, this program does bring together lots of different existing public and private agencies.

The programmatic lead on this project is the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), which is a part of Yale University.

CMHC plans to bring on the local mental-health-services nonprofit Continuum of Care as a subcontractor to provide the actual staff, training, and vehicles that will respond to the relevant 911 calls, they said. 

The city’s 911 call center, police and fire departments, emergency operations center, and chief administrator’s office will also all be involved in the project.

“There are a lot of partners here,” Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton said. ​“How do we know who’s responsible for what? How do we coordinate the effort?”

“For the past almost 18 months, we have been meeting on a weekly basis to ensure that we are all communicating with each other,” Sosa-Lombardo said. 

Dalal clarified that the project is housed in the Department of Community Resilience. Sosa-Lombardo is the city staffer responsible for overseeing it. 

Reporting to him will be the project’s lead contractor, which is CMHC. 

CMHC will then be responsible for coordinating the various ​“implementation partners,” namely Continuum of Care, which will be operating the vans and hiring, training, and supervising the staff.

“We give the dollars to Yale, but the majority of the dollars will be subcontracted to Continuum of Care, who will be implementing the program in the field,” Dalal said about the proposed $3.5 million contract.

“It just seems like there’s a lot of chefs in the kitchen, so to speak,” Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter said.

Asked by Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison for details on how the pilot phase of this program will play out, Sosa-Lombardo said that the COMPASS team will consist of two individuals per shift — a licensed social worker and a ​“peer” who has lived experience with some of the issues that the program is designed to address, such as substance abuse and homelessness. 

During the first year of the contract with Yale, a two-person team will work one eight-hour daily shift. 

During the second year, another two-person team will be added, meaning that two eight-hour daily shifts will be covered. 

During the third year, another two-person team will be added, meaning full 24/7 coverage.

Sosa-Lombardo and Dalal said that this team is designed to help people in crisis who are 18 years old and up. Asked by Festa about why such a team is not also set up to help children in crisis, they said that Clifford Beers Clinic already operates a mobile crisis response team for kids.

And what about the $2 million federal grant? How exactly will that money be used?

“The resources and uses of the funds are subject to federal regulations,” Sosa-Lombardo said, and the federal Department of Justice hasn’t released that guidance yet.

So we have no clue how this $2 million is going to be spent?

“We do not it will go through COMPASS,” Sosa-Lombardo said. It may also go towards funding services ​“relevant” to COMPASS’s work, such as ​“crisis beds” and ​“detox beds.” That is all contingent on what is allowed under the federal guidelines.

Sosa-Lombardo said that 77 percent of the $3.5 million contract budget will go ​“directly to the [COMPASS] program,” 20 percent to evaluating how the program is working, and 3 percent to administrative overhead.