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Falls Church pilot suggests a full‑time behavioral health clinician to support police, schools and HHS
Summary
A city pilot pairing a clinician with police response to behavioral‑health calls found gaps in information sharing and follow‑up capacity; staff recommended considering a full‑time clinician housed in Human Services to provide clinical consultation, case management and linkages, with any hiring to be considered in the FY26 budget.
City staff presented results of a year‑long co‑responder pilot on Feb. 10 and recommended the city consider hiring a full‑time behavioral health clinician to support the police department, schools and the Department of Housing and Human Services (HHS).
Dr. Tanisha Bracey, a clinical counselor at Aurora House who led the pilot, said the Marcus Alert framework requires coordinated responses to behavioral‑health 911 calls but that the city’s experience working under the Fairfax‑Falls Church Community Services Board (CSB) left gaps the pilot exposed. The pilot provided clinician support on outreach to unhoused individuals, consultations with schools, and clinical advice during psychiatric crises, Bracey told council.
Bracey summarized what the pilot revealed: limited information‑sharing between behavioral‑health providers and police, obstacles created by differing legal jurisdictions, few direct referral avenues, and the fact that police case management of these situations is time consuming. Based on the work, staff proposed a single, full‑time clinician — licensed or licensure‑eligible — housed within HHS with clinical supervision provided by Dr. Bracey. The clinician would provide consultation, initial intervention, linkage to services, and case‑management follow‑up rather than function as a 24/7 emergency responder.
Police Chief Ford said Falls Church officers already use a crisis‑intervention model, with a high proportion of patrol and investigative staff trained in Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) methods and continuing de‑escalation and refresher training. He said co‑response teams provide an alternative to arrest by supplying non‑law‑enforcement resources during crises.
Councilors pressed for more data to support a new full‑time position. Councilor Snyder questioned the volume of calls — noting a slide with roughly 81 behavioral‑health calls in a year — and asked whether that justified an FTE. Bracey and HHS Director Dana Jones responded that the pilot’s slide counts only incidents explicitly coded as “mental‑health” or “suicide,” and that many other calls for service include behavioral‑health elements that are not captured by that single category. Jones said HHS has more requests related to unhoused residents and that a dedicated clinician would free HHS staff and police to handle more cases without repeated follow‑up.
Several council members said they supported the pilot and the goal of reducing police burden and improving outcomes, but asked staff to return with more data: a clearer count of incidents with behavioral‑health involvement (including calls not coded exclusively as mental‑health), average officer time spent on such calls, and comparative models from similar jurisdictions such as Fairfax City.
Ending: Staff said the recommendation is a pre‑budget discussion point; any hiring would be considered alongside other priorities in the FY26 budget. Council asked staff to provide additional data on incident volume, time‑on‑scene and outcomes, and to benchmark models used by nearby jurisdictions.
