Big Funding Questions on Horizon for Santa Barbara County’s Co-Response Teams

Reports of the impending demise of Santa Barbara County’s much-heralded three co-response teams — in which law enforcement officers and mental-health professionals tag-team in response to mental-health-crisis calls — appear to have been exaggerated, but only somewhat. Funding remains secure for the rest of this year, according to county public information officer Kelsey Buttitta, but after that, there’s a big $1.4 million question mark hovering over the program that puts three teams out in the field.

Mental health advocates have been warning that the program’s days are numbered, citing the loss of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds and state Proposition 47 grants that helped keep the program financially afloat. The state grants — which fund one of the three teams — expire at the end of the year, and the ARPA funds — which fund two of them — expire July 1 next year.

When those dollars disappear, the funding challenges will grow more acute. Currently, $400,000 has been set aside for that time, but another $1 million will be needed to field the full three teams.

Mental-health advocates have embraced the program — run jointly by the Sheriff’s Office and Behavioral Wellness (BWell) — citing statistics indicating the approach keeps potentially explosive confrontations between law enforcement and the mentally ill from escalating violently, somethings with terminal results. Likewise, they say the program helps keep people in the throes of a mental health crisis out of county jail and into more suitable programs outside the criminal justice system.

From the law enforcement perspective, the program reportedly liberates officers from the time they might otherwise have to spend keeping a lid on individuals in a volatile state while crisis management professionals with BWell.

While these teams emerged as the bright, shiny object in a milieu where there were very few, recent audits have suggested that the benefits of the program have either been overstated or inconsistently reported. According to Buttitta, the program has most beneficial impact in high-risk situations; in less-flashy encounters where law enforcement backup is less critical, she said mobile crisis intervention teams dispatched by BWell suffice.