As long as there's a breath in me, I'll make yours just as sweet. As we look into the future, it's as far as we can see. So let's make each tomorrow be the best that it can be. I cross my heart and promise to give all I've got to give to make all your dreams come true. In all the world, you'll never find a love as true as mine. And if along the way we find the day it starts to storm, you've got the promise of my love to keep you warm. In all the world, you'll never find a love as true as mine. A love as true as mine. A love as true as mine. Fly away with me tonight. Take me on a one-way flight in your loving arms and everything's gonna be alright. You're the one who took my hand when no one else could understand. You're the one who moves me like nobody else can. Take me down where I want to be. Turn around this man who lives inside of me. Take me down and love me all night long. Hold me close and make me strong. Take me down. Take me down tonight. In your eyes, I see a light. It's your emotions glowing bright. So keep the fires burning. Let it warm me through the night. You can be a part of me. Cause you're what love was meant to be. You and me, baby, will set this flame inside us free. You don't have to stay forever. Let's just put our hearts together. Share another night in ecstasy. We know that it's feeling better every time we get together. Maybe love was meant for you and me. Take me down where I want to be. Turn around this man who lives inside of me. Take me down and love me all night long. Hold me close and make me strong. Take me down. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. Take me down tonight. It's funny how I find myself in love with you. If I could buy my reasoning, I'd pay it to lose. When life won't do, I'll ask myself, how much do you commit yourself? Oh, it's my life, don't you forget. It's my life, it never ends. It's funny how I find myself in love with you. If I could buy my reasoning, I'd pay it to lose. If I could buy my reasoning, I'd pay it to lose. If I could buy my reasoning, I'd pay it to lose. If I could buy my reasoning, I'd pay it to lose. It's funny how I find myself in love with you. It's funny how I find myself in love with you. I completed my education at Western Carolina University in Asheville, North Carolina. I completed my undergrad and my Masters there in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. During my time there, I worked at Cherokee Indian Hospital in the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit. And then also I did mobile crisis with Appalachian Community Services. So I have quite a history in crisis counseling. Not necessarily something I thought I found myself in but have grown to love. I'm just glad to be a part of this position. Yeah, so if I understand it correctly, the governor essentially allocated some dollars for us to create this team. And can you give us an example of what it would look like if we were responding to a situation? So currently if you have somebody that calls in with a behavioral health issue, like maybe somebody thinking about suicide or ideation, our current model is to respond with eight first responders. And that's a lot of people to put into somebody's house that's experiencing a crisis. So we're going to change the way we respond and put a little more appropriate response, putting the professional in the scene to help de-escalate a situation and figure out what's the best solution for the individual. So I can imagine that responding to a crisis situation with a little bit more kindness and compassion is probably going to make for a more successful conclusion to a situation versus arresting somebody or taking them to jail just because we don't quite understand the situation. I think it's very fair. I think providing that resource, meeting the individual where they are, providing the resource there where they are, and maybe finding a better solution. Currently our solutions are expanding. Right now it used to be you say jail was always a possibility. It's not always the appropriate place, but sometimes that's the only solution. But UK has opened up their empath center recently, and that brings another alternative. NuVista is looking at opening up a facility as well for not, say, emergency room, but more like kind of like an urgent care, if you will. And so there's a lot of things happening in this space in Lexington right now, and not just Lexington, in the Commonwealth, but Lexington is really, I think, on the forefront of that conversation right now. So having Chris partnering with a police officer to be able to provide another response solution is positive for our community, positive for the residents that are in crisis, so we can do something a little different than our traditional way of thinking. Chris, what creative ways do you use to kind of deescalate a situation and show somebody a little bit more compassion than a typical first responder might? Yeah, I feel that it's about presence, just being a human and not necessarily having the barrier of like a badge or a barrier of like an outfit or whatever, maybe even a title. I just really value just being an individual and being a human with somebody. My, you know, the way I go about things is mostly on like needs, like what need is an individual trying to get met. I believe that, you know, people act out or every action is, you know, there's a need behind an action, and so addressing what situation they're in, how can we deescalate, and then refer to resources, you know, whether it's safety planning, whether it's just hearing somebody out for 5 to 10 minutes, getting somebody a bite to eat, it can be as little as that. And so I think it's just really just bringing presence and bringing, you know, my unique self and the experience that I've had over my life. Yeah, that's great. I think it's really proof that Lexington is putting a lot of emphasis on mental health and how we can address the needs of our community in a different way, and like you said, really treating someone as a whole person and not just a situation is something that's really important. Is there anything that you feel is still missing? Do you feel like there is a piece that is kind of still in the works that we are aspiring to become, or do you feel like we're really on the right path to kind of making a difference in the community? I think this is one piece of the puzzle. I think there are some other pieces of the puzzle that we are working on to try to get in. I think the next logical step that I think hopefully will come to fruition is maybe putting somebody at dispatch. There's conversations about putting a behavioral health resource to take a telephone call, and then that kind of goes aligned with, hey, if somebody calls 911 and is in crisis, our dispatchers are phenomenal, but being able to have that educated individual to be able to transfer a phone call to, maybe a de-escalation can happen over the telephone. Maybe that de-escalation can start, and they still send out the mobile crisis response team to engage that individual. But from the time that phone call starts, you can already start that whole process of de-escalating and helping an individual that's experiencing whatever emergency they're having. And so I think that's a good puzzle piece that's being discussed right now and hopefully will come to fruition sooner than later. So those are all things that I'm looking at, and it's a lot of fun right now. Chris, do you feel like this is a model that is seen in other cities, or are we kind of an industry leader in this? Yeah, no, I've spoken to many other co-response departments within the police departments in Colorado, California, Washington, all over the country. This is really new, like community policing, and I think it's been shown to be effective, and I'm hoping that even if it's just me, one person goes a long way, and this is sort of something pretty new for at least the city of Lexington. But I think it will be good. I think it's probably really helpful for you to have a support network to kind of fall back on and ask questions about how to handle specific situations and how maybe you could handle something different. I think that would be really beneficial for you as well. It's really collaborative, like having the community paramedicine team and learning from them, the paramedics or the firefighters and the social workers. I don't feel isolated at all, which is really neat. I'm able to consult with whoever may be even in the city, so it's been really nice to engage with everybody. That's awesome. Is this an arm of paramedicine or is it completely separate? Good question. The paramedicine team is such a collaborative effort. Lexington Police, we have the firefighters, paramedics that are on the team, we have the social workers. And so we were, I think, fairly vocal about wanting to apply for this. In fact, when we noticed the funding opportunity came out, we sent it over to the police because we truly believe it's an integral part of police response. They've been very supportive of us taking the lead and kind of steering the ship, and so they've been great. It is such a collaborative effort between the fire department and the police department. Chris is a fire department employee, but he's going to be partnering with a police officer. And so it's truly going to be a collaborative effort between. So it's just another thing that community paramedicine. We also look at it from a continuation of care, where Chris and the police officer may make an individual on a Monday evening and comes back and says, hey, can somebody follow up with him on Tuesday or Wednesday so they can go on to the next individual that's experiencing that emergency. And the community paramedicine was never a crisis response team. Not that we didn't, but generally speaking, we were post-crisis, post-emergent situation that we were engaging. And so it's kind of a continuity, right? Maybe Chris set up some appointments for an individual. He can now drop it off on our lap to say, hey, can you make sure that individual made those appointments and didn't have any barriers, and the community paramedicine team can pick up that and see those and follow up with that individual over time. So I think it's just a continuation. Chris, do you feel like this, your role, may end up maybe freeing up some of our other first responders that don't need to necessarily stick around in a situation, that you can kind of hang back and kind of manage a situation better than our typical first responders might? Yeah, I wouldn't say better. Maybe a different approach. Sure. Like a more mental health-informed perspective. But yeah, I do think that having eight, whether it's first responders, police officers, or firefighters, is pretty overwhelming for anybody in a mental health crisis. So hopefully just having me being there, I'd be able to alleviate some of those resources so they can better be where they need to be. It's like the most appropriate level of care. And so that's the whole goal. That's great. What we did is looked at the volume based on E911 data. And our first thought when we started working on this project was, it's going to be a Friday-Saturday. How do you hire somebody for a Friday and a Saturday? Everybody wants a weekend. And when we got the data, we were really surprised. Saturdays and Sundays are our slowest days. It ends up being Monday through Thursday end up being our busiest days. And so we started looking through the data and going, okay, what's that window of opportunity, Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m., around 10 a.m. to about 8 p.m.? You could do 11 to 9, but somewhere in that area ends up being about the highest peak volume of hitting that number. Outside of that window, the goal will be that we'll resort back to our traditional response, whatever that looks like. But this unit will be the primary for those types of calls. And if they're on a call or at a service because it's outside of those hours, we'll resort back to our traditional response. So we'll still be responding. Well, thank you both so much for joining me today. And thank you for your hard work with our community paramedicine team. And, Chris, welcome to our team. We really are looking forward to what you can bring to our community. And you're a really valued position, so we're really happy that you're here. And thank you for joining us today. As always, you can get my weekly newsletter by emailing my office at wbaxter at lexingtonky.gov or follow me on all social media outlets. Thanks again, and have a great day. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Hello, and thank you for joining us on this episode of My Council Comment. I'm Whitney Elliott Baxter, 9th District Councilmember, and today I'm in the fire training facility joined by Captain Seth Lockhart of our community paramedicine team and Chris Perrine, our mobile crisis responder. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for inviting us. So can you tell me a little bit about how the program started and what it looks like for our community? Yeah, so a couple years ago we were part of kind of an interview as the state was doing research about needs in the community around mental health and behavioral health response. And one of the things that we highlighted was the fact that, you know, there was no crisis response team in Lexington, really anywhere in the state of Kentucky. And they secured a grant to help fund these programs. Last year they took applications about a year ago and January announced seven communities. Lexington is one of the communities that received the grant, so we have been working over the last few months of developing it, hiring our new employee, bringing him on board and getting him oriented so we can get this going. That's great. We've got Chris Perrine here who is our mobile crisis responder. And tell me a little bit about your background and what you feel like you can bring our community. Yeah, so I completed my education at Western Carolina University in Asheville, North Carolina. I completed my undergrad and my master's there in clinical mental health counseling. During my time there I worked at Cherokee Indian Hospital in the inpatient psychiatric unit. And then also I did mobile crisis with Appalachian Community Services. So I have quite a history in crisis counseling. Quite a lot of it, yeah. Not necessarily something I thought I found myself in, but have grown to love. I'm just glad to be a part of this position. Yeah, so if I understand it correctly, the governor essentially allocated some dollars for us to create this team. And can you give us an example of what it would look like if we were responding to a situation? So currently if you have somebody that calls in with a behavioral health issue, like maybe somebody thinking about suicidal ideation, our current model is to respond with eight first responders. And that's a lot of people to put into somebody's house that's experiencing a crisis. So we're going to change the way we respond and put a little more appropriate response, putting the professional in the scene to help de-escalate a situation and figure out what's the best solution for the individual. So I can imagine that responding to a crisis situation with a little bit more kindness and compassion is probably going to make for a more successful conclusion to a situation versus arresting somebody or taking them to jail just because we don't quite understand the situation. I think it's very fair.