Prince Edward County Committee of the Whole received a report on the progress of the Integrated Mobile Police And Co-Response Team (IMPACT) in the county during their meeting on Thursday.
IMPACT pairs social workers that can provide addictions and mental health support with Ontario Provincial Police in Prince Edward County to help people in the community when police would normally interact with those in need of that kind of support. IMPACT staff can provide help to people in need by both helping them through immediate crisis, and then providing more long term assistance navigating community supports and services related to mental health and addictions.
Similar projects are underway in Belleville and Quinte West.
Derek McGeachy, one of the presenters from IMPACT presented some statistics to the committee on the type of interactions they’ve had with the community.
McGeachy says that since IMPACT team members started working with police in Prince Edward County in July 2022, they have assisted police on 88 live calls where they helped a person in distress. These calls were noted as the police having been called to a scene and encountering a person who could benefit from assistance from the IMPACT team, and then a social worker coming out to assist immediately.
They have also assisted people in 180 after-the-fact referrals, where police determined someone could benefit from the help of the IMPACT team and referred them to IMPACT to see them at a later date.
And they assisted police in 235 proactive outreach situations, making contact with people who were not part of an active call for police assistance, to offer help to vulnerable members of the community.
The committee were happy to hear about the progress the project had made in the community, and referred the report to council.
