Item - 2022.EX29.1

City Council considered Items EX29.1 and EX29.2 together. 

The Executive Committee recommends that:  

1. City Council authorize the Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration to build an expansion list of community partners and potential pilot areas through a Request for Expressions of Interest process, and to report back on the budgetary impacts and considerations to City Council.

2. City Council authorize the Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration to enter into or amend any agreements with FindHelp Information Services, providing for the pilot funds, on the terms and conditions satisfactory to the Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration and in a form acceptable to the City Solicitor.

In February 2021, City Council unanimously approved the Community Crisis Support Service to be piloted in four areas of the City. These pilots will test a new community-led approach to mental health crisis calls to 911, including those involving persons in crisis and wellness checks.  

The pilots respond to City Council’s direction to staff in June 2020 for changes to policing in Toronto and for the City Manager to develop a non-police led, alternative community safety response model for calls involving Toronto residents in mental health crisis. All of the pilots will be implemented in areas where there is a demonstrated need and calls for people in crisis are the highest. One of the four pilots will be Indigenous-led, to advance the City's commitments to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) Calls for Justice. 

The Community Crisis Support Service pilots are also one of SafeTO’s first year priority actions contributing to reducing vulnerability in Toronto through proactive mental health support strategies and community-led crisis support models. The pilots will seek to better support community health, wellness and safety by introducing an alternative model of crisis response that is community-led, person-centred, trauma-informed and focused on harm reduction. The pilots will provide a place-based health response, informed by an understanding of systemic racism and the ongoing impact of colonialism, to deliver consent-based care and ongoing follow-up support to those in crisis.  

The service will launch in two phases, with two pilots anticipated to be active in the northeast and downtown east by March 2022 and the northwest and downtown west by June 2022.  A third-party evaluator will be engaged to develop an outcomes and evaluation framework and publish an independent yearly review of the pilots to help guide implementation and on-going decision-making. To date, staff have worked to ensure all elements are in place for a successful launch of the service.

Key actions taken include: 

- Developing the necessary partnerships to implement the pilots;  

- Building call triage and diversion processes for mental health crisis calls with Toronto Police Service and FindHelp Information Services; 

- Securing technology and radios required to support mobile crisis team communication and dispatching;

- Selecting community anchor partners through four distinct call for proposals processes;  

- Retaining third-party evaluators to develop an evaluation framework for the program;  

- Developing a public education and service identity strategy;

- Coordinating community advisory tables to inform the pilots; 

- Building a robust training program for mobile crisis teams informed by best practices in other jurisdictions;

- Engaging community anchor partners to better coordinate and plan for implementation of pilots; and

- Developing new data collection systems. 
 

This report will provide an update on:  

- The status of work related to the Community Crisis Support Service pilots, including community anchor partner selection, evaluation and knowledge mobilization, and pilot implementation;   

- Key considerations for pilot expansion and next steps;

- A summary of work completed by the City of Toronto, Toronto Police Services Board, and Toronto Police Services on the 36 decisions from CC22.2 and updates on additional non-police interventions requested in EX21.2; and

- Update from the Toronto Police Services Board on the status of 81 decisions adopted at its August 18 meeting related to policing reform.