AURORA, Colo. – Aurora’s Crisis Response Team announced plans to partner with UCHealth to hire more mental health counselors that can respond to emergency mental health calls.
“I’ve already been speaking with UCHealth’s leadership devising a strategic plan of how we will be implementing both a training program for the clinicians coming in to make sure they are adequate and very well trained when they do hit the road, but also making sure that we can hit full staffing quickly,” Courtney Tassin, Aurora Crisis Intervention Program Manager, said during a Public Safety, Courts, and Civil Service Policy Committee meeting.
The Crisis Response Team recently faced criticism after a clinician was not dispatched to the scene of a shooting involving police where officers said a man was threatening RTD passengers with a knife.
Tassin said she was unsure if a clinician would’ve been appropriate in that case but at the time she was the only clinician on the team.
She said the new partnership with help the team recruit more clinicians and the contract will likely be finalized by November.