It’s been one year since the launch of the Windsor police and Hotel-Dieu Crisis Response team.
The program that pairs Windsor police officers with social workers is reportedly seeing improvements in how many people are being sent to hospital emergency rooms nearly a year after being launched.
The team responds to calls for service to assist people presenting with symptoms of mental illness, substance use, and behavioural disorders, as well as people in acute crisis situations, with the goal of diverting them from hospital emergency rooms and freeing up front-line patrol officers.
Integrated Director for Mental Health Outpatient Services at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, Kevin Matte, says between April 2024 and the end of December, the team had around 1,200 direct interactions.
“Ninety per cent of these interactions did not result in an emergency department visit. Whereas if you don’t have a social worker on the road or a mental health professional on the road with an officer, the officer might have a more difficult time making that decision and linking to resources and assessing their safety from a clinical perspective. So, a lot more of those calls would have ended up in the emergency department,” he says.
According to Matte, the interactions lead to an introduction, a mental health assessment, and a direction to services.
“Then they can be directed to somewhere like the emergency department or our mental health and addictions urgent care centre. Or if resources can be provided on an outpatient basis, like an emergency room visit can be avoided altogether. So that’s always the goal: to assess risk and safety and link people to the appropriate resources,” he says.
Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare is providing $850,000 per year to fund the Crisis Response Team, which operates seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m., providing overlap coverage with the Nurse Police Team during peak hours and reducing the number of calls to which patrol units must respond.
Matte said he thinks they are doing better as a community in addressing the issue.
“Not only in things like this, but we have also launched expanded hours at our mental health and addictions urgent crisis centre,” he says. “So not only do we have mental health workers in the community helping people, but now we also have an alternative place to bring these people for help that’s an alternate destination from the emergency department.”
In February 2025, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare expanded services at the Mental Health and Addictions Urgent Crisis Centre next to the emergency department at Windsor Regional Hospital’s Ouellette Campus.
It now operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, giving police and EMS more options to take those in need to a place to receive care as opposed to going to an emergency room.
—Rusty Thomson/AM800 News
