Intercept 0 – Community Services

Proper training to improve outcomes for individuals with mental health and substance use challenges starts before individuals even encounter law enforcement personnel.

SIM model

Intercept 0 – Community Services

Intercept 0 includes community support providers such as crisis lines and the crisis care continuum (emergency rooms, psychiatric hospital units, residential crisis services, deflection and pre-arrest services, etc.). These services are labeled as Intercept 0 as they may not yet include law enforcement or the justice system but can become a doorway to Intercept 1 if law enforcement becomes involved or responds to the crisis. Therefore, Intercept 0 can present a valuable opportunity for intervention and possible diversion away from the criminal justice system while ensuring access to a robust continuum of care for mental health and substance use challenges.

Intercept 0 CCBHC Integration Opportunities

  • Mobile crisis outreach teams and co-responders
  • Emergency department (ED) diversion
  • Police-friendly crisis services, including deflection services

Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) are required to provide crisis response services, including 24-hour mobile crisis response and crisis stabilization services. EDs and local justice agencies are required care coordination partners for CCBHCs. The CCBHC model has supported clinics in engaging in co-responder initiatives (38%), dispatching Mental Health/Substance Use response teams in lieu of law enforcement (19%), establishing crisis drop-off facilities to allow officers to transition an individual more quickly to clinical treatment rather than hospitalization or jail (33%) and working with EDs to divert individuals in crisis to outpatient services where clinically appropriate (79%).

Intercept 0 Core Competencies

Collaboration and Teamwork
  • Adopt a single system-wide county definition of key terms consistently used by local behavioral health systems, jails, courts and community corrections, including but not limited to:
    1. Substance use disorders
    2. Serious mental illness
    3. Recidivism
  • Identify service capacity/interventions/gaps.
  • Understand respective roles and responsibilities.
  • Develop cross-system information and data sharing agreements to facilitate communication between systems and to inform program development and analysis.
  • Obtain leadership commitment (criminal justice council or task force).
    1. Develop collaborative criminal justice and behavioral task force if one does not already exist.
Workforce Development
  • Provide cross-systems training on:
    1. Substance Use Disorder and MAT
    2. Implicit bias
    3. Data and evaluation
    4. Trauma-informed Care
    5. Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) for public safety
    6. Motivational Interviewing
    7. Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT)
    8. Peer Navigators/Recovery Coaches
    9. Integrated mental health treatment for co-occurring substance use disorders
    10. Training on deflection and pre-arrest diversion
Screening and Assessment
  • Share assessment information with partners to streamline workflow and coordinate care.
Care Planning and Care Coordination
  • Develop process for linking to services (warm handoffs).
Cultural Humility
  • Apply and address across remaining categories once competent in these principles:
    1. Implement/enhance structural racism training and education.
    2. Adapt services to language, gender and pronoun preferences and cultural norms of population served.
    3. Promote diversity among staff teams, executive leadership, boards.
  • Develop task force that is inclusive of individuals with lived experience to spearhead the implementation/assessment of anti-racist policies and procedures, training and education.
Racial and Ethnic Disparities
  • Identify and address racial disparities within criminal justice system involvement and in health care access and quality for populations served.
  • Develop task force to address racial and ethnic disparities to help achieve the following goals:
    1. Set qualitative process and outcome goals for racial and ethnic disparity reduction.
    2. Set a numerical target for reducing justice system involvement and/or improving outcomes for Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC).
    3. Set a numerical target for reducing the relative likelihood of justice system involvement for BIPOC compared to White adults.
Evaluation and Quality Improvement
  • Develop a city/county-level training plan that includes quality assurance to ensure fidelity.
  • Develop a city/county-level plan for information/data sharing:
    1. Data Collection Across the Sequential Intercept Model (SIM): Essential Measures
Funding and Sustainability
  • Prioritize policy, practice and funding improvements. For example:
    1. Understand Medicaid/SSA coverage.
    2. Routinely communicate with the people responsible for the county budget.
    3. Utilize data to justify funding.
    4. Explore federal funding opportunities.

National Council Resources

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