Why It Matters Issue 2 - May 2026

Why It Matters

Issue 2 – May 2026

Welcome back!

In honor of May (Mental Health Month), I am focusing this issue on Pierce County’s “Co-Responder” program.

Do you know someone who has experienced a crisis in their lives?

It can happen to anyone, and that’s why it matters.

Police receive a phone call. The call could be from a teen, parent, teacher, or neighbor. They could be calling about themselves or someone they love. The person in question is in crisis.

In the past, if the person was considered a danger to themselves or someone else, it resulted in a squad car ride to a treatment center as much as four or five hours away. The protocol calls for handcuffing the individual experiencing this kind of crisis.

To those in crisis, being treated this way adds trauma to an already painful experience.

To the officer, the time spent transporting an individual uses up a day of work that could be focused on other community needs. Officers serving as taxi drivers is not the best use of our law enforcement resources. Human services covers the hospitalization costs but that means less money for other services.

Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire or the L.E. Phillips Libertas treatment center in Chippewa Falls used to be the closest facilities available. Both were closed in 2024. People in crisis are currently taken to Amery Hospital, the Mayo Hospital in Eau Claire, sometimes as far away as the Winnebago Mental Health Institute near Oshkosh, over 250 miles away, or Trempealeau Rehab in Trempealeau County.

Enter the Co-Responder program.

How does it work?

When police are called and the person is deemed a danger to themselves or someone else, a trained professional will assist law enforcement with de-escalating the situation. It is better for the individual because they have a chance to work through the crisis, create a safety plan and a chance to stay in their community even when they have been deemed to have safety concerns. The co-responders work with the person and family/friends (natural supports) to create a contract for safety. This program helps reduce hospitalization rates and gives the person coping skills.

Instead of a squad car experience, an assessment is done of the individual’s situation. What is the nature of the crisis? What resources are available to support them? Do they need medical care? Do they want help?

This last question is important. If a person is not a danger to themselves or others, they have the right to refuse help.

Appropriate levels of care are provided and can include voluntary or involuntary inpatient care, a safety plan at home and in the community, and follow-up services. If police are needed, then there is collaboration between law enforcement and the mental health providers.

According to Elizabeth Anez ,the Community Behavioral Health Manager for Pierce County: ”If a person is at risk of hurting themselves or someone else, then law enforcement has ability to ‘take them into custody’ and put them on a 51.15, (State Statute 51.15) which is an emergency detention, and then they are taken to the hospital.  This is a joint decision by law enforcement and the crisis worker.  This is a big decision that we do not take lightly as we are taking people's rights away temporarily due to them being at risk.  We never want to do this except in an emergency.”

Most facilities are set up to get the individual back into the community, supplanted with wrap around services in a few days. Wrap around services are key to helping the individual stay out of crisis and recover.

When people end up at Winnebago or Amery, most of the services are funded through Medicaid. For that population that doesn’t have Medicaid but is still in need of wraparound services, those services are free of charge to the family. The Coordinator Services Team (CRT) received a grant to pay for those services.

Trempealeau is set up to keep people for a minimum of 90 days. This applies to those with chronic situations that require ongoing assessment and analysis of the best treatment options.

Access to the Co-Responder program:

Pierce County contracts with Northwest Connections to provide 24-hour telephone crisis coverage seven days per week. For those needing face-to-face help mobile coverage is available every day from 4 pm to 12 am.  Pierce County has walk-in coverage available at the county Monday through Friday from 8 am to 4:30 pm.

If someone is in imminent danger, please call 911.

If there is no imminent danger, call Northwest Connections at 888-552-6642 

OR 

Call Pierce County Crisis, 715-273-6770 (ask for the on-call crisis worker.)

Co-Responder Benefits - What the data says:

The total diversion from hospitalizations was  93.2 percent. The total emergency detentions (hospitalizations) were 6.8 percent. The program recently received a grant to fund new clinical supervision with which they hope to decrease that 6.8 percent by an additional 10 percent. (10 percent of 6.8 percent.)

Those who live on the financial margins of society are growing due to the increasing disparity between rich and poor. The 20 percent cut to SNAP benefits from Congress passing H.R. 1 last May means 43,000 Wisconsinites are slated to lose their SNAP benefits this month. Food prices are going up and will continue to rise from fuel costs alone.

These economic hardships are not just statistics. They are the people you and I know and see in our schools, churches, the grocery store, service clubs and parent teacher associations. It is you and me. It is a given that when people are worried about keeping themselves and their families housed and fed there is a corresponding increase in the number of people who find themselves in crisis.

And it doesn’t have to be this way.  (to be covered later in a series of newsletters)

In the meantime - Call Pierce County Chair Jon Aubart (715-441-2604) and your Board Supervisor (Frank During in District 8, 715-821-7128 ) and thank them for the wonderful work that the staff at Community Behavioral Health are doing to serve our community.

For a list of the other County Supervisors, go to:  Pierce County, WI

How did we get here?

For decades, our State and Federal Governments have prioritized tax incentives for major corporations instead of providing basic resources (fully funding education, infrastructure, minimum wages) that would go a long way to help keep people out of crisis.

That is a generalized statement on how we went from the stable prosperity of the 1950s to where we are today and the policies that put us here.  I can dig into this subject more and what to do about it if you are interested. Let me know.

Future issues will offer additional resources that people can access on a variety of topics. In the meantime, our community is very fortunate to have the Co-Responder program AND many other community health -elated resources.

For more information:

Other related wraparound services you can find on the County website:  Pierce County, WI

Search For Treatment - FindTreatment.gov

211 Wisconsin

One final note: Not all treatment centers are alike. In a future newsletter, I will be taking a deeper dive into the conditions present in one or more of the treatment centers from the perspective of people who lived through the experience of receiving care, and from those providing that care.