A joint Winnipeg Police and Shared Health program that provides on-site support to people experiencing a mental health crisis is getting a funding boost from the province to expand the service.

 The Alternative Response to Citizens in Crisis (ARCC) program pairs clinicians with plainclothes police officers, dispatching them to non-criminal, non-emergent crisis situations in an effort to better support the needs of those experiencing a mental health crisis than might otherwise be the case with a traditional uniformed police response.

ARCC started as a pilot project in 2021, linking the Winnipeg Police Service and Shared Health’s Crisis Response Centre at Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg.

The province is providing just over $400 thousand to help the programs transition from a five-day-a-week pilot project to an ongoing mental health intervention response running seven days a week.

In its pilot period, ARCC engaged in 882 police events involving 530 individuals.  More than 90 per cent of the people it helped were able to remain in the community instead of ending up in an emergency room, and the vast majority of the engagements were resolved with only ARCC intervention.  The province also noted the number of patients brought to emergency departments by police for a mental health assessment was reduced by 29 per cent during the pilot program period.

“The creation of a more collaborative model between clinicians and police is resulting in an improved experience and improved outcomes for individuals experiencing mental health-related distress, which serves to both reduce pressure on our emergency departments and free up police officers to respond to other calls,” said Erika Hunzinger, manager, Crisis Response Centre.