Mental Health Department

About

In 2021 the jail area was doing about 20 hours a week with some mental health care. It was quickly assessed that this was woefully short when it comes to being able to provide the necessary mental health services that were desperately needed.

In 2022-2023, we partnered with the Seneca County Mental Health and Recovery Services Board and Firelands Counseling and Recovery Services and was able to obtain a 32 hour a week case manager who would be inside our facility M-T-WF and able to refer services to individuals or take care of their problems.

In addition, we have a licensed therapist who comes in once a week, on Thursdays, who is available for the inmates mental health.

Currently we have an in-take case manager who refers newly processed inmates to the mental health services and has expanded her role to include more educational aspects such as our GED program and the ability to actually take the GED test WHILE an inmate is here at our facility. Studies have shown that the closer to the testing once the program is complete the better the percentage of passing it.

The Seneca County Sheriff’s Office is committed to ensuring that mental health services is a priority.

MCRT – Mobile Crisis Response Team

In July of 2023, the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office partnered with the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board of Seneca County to provide Mobile Crisis Response Team (MCRT) services for citizens that may experience a mental or drug/alcohol related crisis. The goal of the program is to reduce the time spent taking the crisis calls, responding to the crisis calls, providing proper mental health assistance to individuals in need, and tying up Law Enforcement Services and “off-loading” them to the MCRT.

Too often, our deputies are responding to mental health crisis situations that even though they have SOME training in dealing with mental health situations, de-escalation, and crisis intervention training, are just beyond what we do or should be doing.

Through this partnership with MCRT, our deputies are able to call MCRT and ask for assistance. MCRT can arrive at the scene and provide adequate services and support to the individual experiencing a crisis. Our deputies can leave knowing that the person is getting the necessary help from professionals specifically trained for these type of situations.

In certain situations, the MCRT can be directly dispatched without a deputy involved. What we have found, and what was hoped for, is that some calls are disappearing off the radar for our dispatch and those individuals, used to calling 911 or our general line repeatedly, are now calling MCRT directly!

This is a huge relief on our public safety services and the half a year numbers shown below should show our residents that this type of collaboration works and is ultimately a win-win by saving money/resources and at the same time providing a better service to the at-crisis individuals/families that call our agency for assistance/help.