Toronto police rolling out mental-health app

Officers will have access to location-specific information on social services for people in crisis.

Thestar.com
April 20, 2017
By Peter Goffin

Toronto police are preparing to roll out a smartphone app that will help officers connect people in need with mental-health services in their area.

Known as the Community Asset Portal, the location-detecting app presents users with a scrollable map of services near them, and detailed information on each provider. The app will also show users how to get to the service from their current location by car, foot or public transit.

“This isn’t just, ‘There’s a place here that offers this type of service.’ It (says) ‘You can call this individual, during these hours to get this type of service,’” said Ian Williams, manager of business intelligence and analytics for the Toronto Police Service.

Williams says the goal is for officers to be able to quickly direct a person in crisis to the services that best suit their needs.

“The key purpose was to enable front-line officers really quick access to services, not only for themselves if they decide they need to support an individual in crisis, but for the person’s family.”

Toronto police receive an average of 70 calls a day to deal with someone who has mental health issues, Williams said.

“About half of them result in an apprehension and that means the officers are obligated under the Mental Health Act to escort that person to a care facility of some sort, which often involves hours of waiting,” Williams added.

The app could allow officers to shortcut that process, taking people directly to the specific type of support service they need, said Williams.

In other cases, the officer might share the information on the app with the family or friends of the person in need, so the next time they can take the person to get help before the situation becomes serious enough that police are called.

“Ultimately, we’d love to see a decrease in the calls that we attend for mental illness because there’s proactive work (and) service provision,” said Williams.

“There’s probably better community support than us going on a 911 call, which is essentially escalates things right off the bat.”

All the information on the various services comes from Toronto 211, an information hub for social services that’s akin to the city’s 311 hotline for municipal service information.

Over time, as services change or new ones are developed, 211 will provide updated data to Toronto police, Williams said.

While the app was created with mental-health services in mind, it also connects users to other community-based resources, such as physical health and addictions services and employment support.

The app is an effort to fulfill one of the recommendations made by former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci in his 2014 review of police encounters with people in crisis.

Iacobucci’s report called for the Toronto Police Service to “more proactively and comprehensively educate officers on available mental health resources,” in part by creating technological access to “a comprehensive up-to-date list or map.”

Toronto police took the idea for the app to Ryerson University’s geography department, where it was built by a group of master’s students in the spatial analysis program.

The app has just gone through a four-month pilot project, in which it was tested by officers in four divisions.

It is now being fine tuned for release to all officers.