Albany County officials are hailing a pilot program augmenting 911 services a success.
Officials gathered Friday to share results gleaned from statistics analyzed pertaining to the Albany County Crisis Officials Responding and Diverting initiative, known by the acronym ACCORD.
According to the county website, the ACCORD program was created in December 2020 with an initial investment of $170,000 to fund two additional social worker positions in the Department of Mental Health. Another $30,000 was invested for the partnership between the County and the University at Albany. ACCORD officially launched in June 2021. In December the state committed $350,000 to help ACCORD expand.
Tomoko Udo, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management, and Behavior in the University at Albany’s School of Public Health, says the ACCORD program fills important service gaps in a community that traditionally lacks access to behavioral health and medical services. Udo says ACCORD responders typically calm tense situations, evaluate people's needs on the scene and if necessary refer them to other agencies for follow-up without the need for intervention by traditional law enforcement.
"We were able to access to the data from the dispatcher or 911 call data, and also our court administrative data from June 2021, and June 2022," Udo said. "So that's the first year of the pilot implementation in our area. And during this year, we found that the total of 240 dispatch calls were diverted to the support team and disregards that in a total of 548 encounters with 210 unique individuals. And the majority of these clients have never interacted with the other services offered by the County Department of Mental Health. So this means that the programs are able to reach a new client, people who never really interacted with the system in the past."
The ACCORD Implementation Evaluation Report was prepared by the University at Albany’s School of Public Health and School of Social Welfare.
Democratic Albany County Legislature Chair Andrew Joyce says the report supports expanding the program to make it more available for all county residents.
"What we found is that there is a real crisis existing in our communities right now as it relates to mental health," Joyce said. "So what we would like to do is ensure that everyone within our key staff in the county that worked for the ACCORD program, or EMS or law enforcement, that respond to these specific calls, have that mental health training, and are aware of the challenges out there with individuals that are struggling, and to get them better, better visibility, and better training, in terms of dealing with these different crises, will help our program going forward and improve it as we try to widen it across Albany County."
County officials say talks about expanding the ACCORD program are ongoing. Again, Udo:
"What we learned from speaking with that core team members, but that's establishing strong partnerships and trust between the ACCORD team and law enforcement is one of the keys to that program's success," Udo said. "So we definitely recommend that to other jurisdictions who are considering to adopt this program, focus on that."
It has not been determined how much in additional funding would be needed for further expansion.
The ACCORD pilot program evaluation report can be found at: www.albanycounty.com/legislature/accord2022.
