Evaluating a Community Wellness and Crisis Response Team pilot program

San Mateo County launched a Community Wellness and Crisis Response Team (CWCRT) Pilot Program in December 2021. The program provides a mental health clinician co-responding with a law enforcement officer to 911 calls that involve someone experiencing a mental health-related crisis. The county engaged Stanford's John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities to conduct an independent evaluation of the pilot program's implementation and outcomes.

The challenge

911 is usually the first phone number we call in an emergency — but what if that emergency involves a mental health crisis? That's the challenge police departments have been grappling with as mental health disorders continue to rise in the United States, especially among young people.

The solution

Cities and counties nationwide have been experimenting with new models to address this challenge, including California's San Mateo County, which launched a Community Wellness and Crisis Response Team (CWCRT) Pilot Program in four of its largest cities starting in December 2021.

The Gardner Center's independent evaluation, based on data from the first two years of the pilot program’s implementation, has culminated in the production of six written reports and the first credible causal estimates of a co-responder program’s effects on communities in the United States.

According to Gardner Center Faculty Director Thomas Dee, "It is rare that we see effects of this magnitude when studying a program with credible research designs. This is really good news for agencies that want to find new and cost-effective ways to better serve some of the most vulnerable members of their communities."

Key takeaways

The Gardner Center's work with San Mateo County during this pilot period presents the first credible causal estimates of a co-responder program’s effects on communities in the United States. Key findings:

The most significant impact of the program is in the reduction of involuntary psychiatric detentions by 16 percent in participating communities.

Over time, the presence of the CWCRT Pilot Program in a community reduces the number of calls for service recorded as “mental health incidents” by 17 percent.

The types of calls prompting dispatchers to request a co-responder team rarely result in an arrest, use of force, police case, or criminal complaint — so the presence of the program did not have any detectable impact on these outcomes at the community level.