Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory EMS Chief and C.A.R.E.S. Director Chris Fancil updated board members at the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory meeting Wednesday, Nov. 8. InkFreeNews file photo.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Indiana’s 988 suicide and crisis lifeline was brought up and explained Wednesday, Nov. 8, during the C.A.R.E.S. update at the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory meeting.

Chris Fancil, EMS chief and Community Assistance Resources Emergency Services director, reported they had “quite a few” referrals and check-ins on some folks in October.

“We do quite a few followups, but those followups typically are for people who might be headed for a crisis situation if we didn’t do the followups,” he said. “So by popping in and visiting with them occasionally, we keep them out of that crisis situation and maybe keep them from calling 911 … and maybe misusing some of the resources we have in our community.”

Month after month, Fancil said CARES is just getting busier and busier. “So by not misusing some of those resources, they’re able to refocus and do some other things.”

C.A.R.E.S. had 75 total interactions in October. Coordinator Mikaela Bixler is still training people in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) suicide prevention, and Fancil said quite a few other people are interested in receiving that training so Bixler will continue to do that.

“It’s really beneficial to have people understand that they can talk to others if they think they might be suicidal, and hopefully prevent them from doing anything and getting them the help that they need. That is what the QPR training is,” he said.
Also in October, Fancil said C.A.R.E.S. had 16 new consumers and that number seems to be going up all the time. “Just more and more referrals from police departments, sheriff’s office.”

He said they now have been as far away as North Webster with a quick referral up there on a veteran who was struggling and couldn’t get to resources. “We went up and were able to find a resource within his community, so that should take care of itself. We certainly want to address those when we have the opportunity to do so.”

Board member David Allbritten asked Fancil how he saw the 75 interactions in October, if that was up or down from prior months.
“It climbs about 10% a month, I would say,” Fancil responded. “Another thing that we did do is we’ve started having meetings on crisis intervention training. And so, we’re really putting together a group that is going to work with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) to certify it, but we’re going to be doing some, hopefully, crisis intervention training for law enforcement, probably after the first of the year.”

Older police officers and members of law enforcement have had that training, he said, but that training was stopped at some point so younger officers don’t have that training.

“What that really is, is de-escalation, defusing type of training. Dealing with people who are probably having the worst day of their lives, getting them to kind of calm down, have a good conversation and then make it a productive interaction. So, that’s the goal,” Fancil stated.

Surrounding counties are already offering the training. “We feel like that’s a CARES thing, we can get other folks the ability to do that de-escalation piece, so we’re pretty happy about that as well,” he said.

Board member and Warsaw Common Councilman Mike Klondaris said he recently became aware of the 988 hotline and had never heard of that before. He asked if 988 was used locally and what specifically that was.

“The state of Indiana has adopted 988 as the crisis or suicide hotline. We’ve always had a suicide hotline, most people were unaware. A lot of people didn’t know it existed so they would never call it, they would call 911,” Fancil said.

The state is putting a lot of money toward 988 and doing a lot of education and public relations to try to educate people, he continued.

“They want people who are in a mental health crisis to call 988, and instead of going to a 911 operator, it would go to someone who is especially trained to deal with somebody in a mental health crisis,” Fancil said.

The eventual evolution of the hotline number is that there would be a local crisis response team that would then go to that home. Fancil said, “As I understand it, the way the state is pushing money out to the community health providers — and I don’t have all the details on this because we are not a community health provider, Bowen (Center) is our community health provider — but they’re telling them to do certain things so that they can capture, first, the money involved to do it because they have to hire staff and it takes resources to respond to these situations. But, they have to be able to respond, I believe, to a 45-mile radius within an hour with that crisis response team to deal with that person who is having a rough time.”

If someone locally were to call 988, Klondaris asked where that call would go to. Fancil said he believed the state has contracted with other providers to take the calls, and then they reach out to the local community health provider and ask for a response to the situation.

Fancil said he didn’t believe the Bowen Center had their crisis team set up yet as they’re still working through that.
Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer said, “The resurgence of that is relatively new, and we’re actually working through that.”

Fancil said C.A.R.E.S. gets a lot of referrals through 911 already, as well as through other public safety responders.

“Law enforcement’s been contacting us quite a bit lately and asking us to go visit with people, and we do that almost on a daily basis,” he said.

The official website for 988 is 988lifeline.org.