Viewpoint: Missoula crisis levy will save lives and free up ER

Jen Molloy

We write to the Missoula community as social workers and educators to humbly ask that you support the Crisis Intervention Levy on the Nov. 8 election ballot.

Over the past two years we have witnessed leaders in our community making significant effort to provide help to Missoulians in crisis. These intervention efforts have improved the conditions for many folks in the following ways: providing safe places for people experiencing homelessness to go, connecting people to food, shelter, and clothing, and, overall, reducing barriers for people to get the help they need.

These actions have helped save and transform lives while also reducing costs and negative impacts on our health and justice systems. Providing people in crisis with appropriate help when they need it is cost effective and frees up ER staff and law enforcement to more successfully do their work of protecting public health and safety.

For example, the Mobile Support Team, which sends EMTs and clinicians to crisis calls, has saved $815,900 in Emergency Room visits over the past 18 months and provided people with safe shelter which has saved lives. The Emergency Winter Shelter served 567 people last season, and, as a result, no one died from exposure on our streets last year.

• The levy will help sustain the Crisis Intervention Program, which provides elective, hands-on, nationally vetted training to law enforcement and other first responders to recognize and address individuals having a behavioral health crisis. It also will help support the establishment of:
• The Crisis Receiving Center, a proposed medical site for those experiencing a behavioral health crisis to stabilize rather than enter the emergency room or jail.
• The Trinity Navigation Center, which will provide needed services with low barriers to folks who are living unhoused in Missoula including: connection to the Missoula Coordinated Entry System and housing navigation, warming space, basic health care, and a reliable community of support.

As community members, social workers, and professors, we have witnessed the incredible work being done in our community to help our neighbors in need. Our students have had the opportunity to work within a number of these crisis intervention programs, helping to contribute to our community as they gain valuable experience and skills.

We can’t go back. We cannot leave people in crisis to live on the streets and without connection to supportive programs, and we can’t continue to ask law enforcement to act as mental health professionals nor ask hospitals to provide basic needs outside their scope of care. It isn’t fair and it certainly isn’t a cost-effective or ethical way to help folks in need.

But the pandemic-related federal funding that sustained this progress will end this year. Missoula County is at a crossroads: We can continue providing shelter and services to those in crisis and help create a path toward healing, or we can ignore the needs of our fellow community members, knowing these challenges will only grow worse if we fail to address them. These folks are our neighbors, veterans, and families. They are humans in need of help and deserving of dignity.

The Crisis Intervention efforts is an incredible step toward a kinder and safer Missoula.  We urge voters to embrace these efforts and to support this vital levy. This work is changing individual lives right now and will impact generations to come.

Dr. Jen Molloy, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Ph.D.; Amanda Cahill, Clinical Assistant Professor of Social Work, MSW; The views expressed in this editorial are ours, and not representative of the Univeristy of Montana.