The Alternative Mobile Services Association is an emerging group of professionals and peers with the purpose of researching, assessing, and identifying best practice models of mobile response services that support or are alternatives to traditional 911 emergency response, police services, and unnecessary hospitalization. Additionally, the association seeks to promote networking and cooperation among providers, jurisdictions and allied stakeholders interested in alternatives to conventional policing.
The Alternative Mobile Services Association supports street-level alternatives to police.
What are Alternative Mobile Services?
Mobile services encompass a variety of responses to the immediate needs and crisis situations in the community. Mobile services can include street outreach vans that provide supplies and support to the homeless, mental health agencies that provide in-person mobile response to clients in suicidal crisis (either immediately or within 24 hours), police programs that pair a clinician with a police officer to respond to mental health related calls, and hospital-based outreach programs which provide services in their community. A mobile service is simply any service that works with high-needs populations and meets them where they’re at, in their own space, to get them the help they need in a moment of need or distress.
What does the Alternative Mobile Services Association do?
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- Monthly AMSA Talks with expert speakers + Q&A
- Access to archive of news and academic articles
- Virtual conference – 2022
- National directory of mobile medical crisis services
- Information about private, state and federal funding sources
- Resource panel of conference speakers, subject area and field experts
- Support study, testing and maintenance of a fidelity model
- Access to materials from member agencies
- Presentations
- Promotional materials
- Budgeting documents
- Planning documents
- RFPs & contracts
- Data from active mobile services
New members of AMSA for 2021-2022 – City of Chicago – Department of Public Health, City of Olympia – Police Department Crisis Response Unit, City of Portland – Portland Street Response, City of Atlanta – Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative (PAD), Thurston Mason Behavioral Health Administrative Service Organization, City of Denver STAR Program, White Bird Clinic – CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Trillium Family Services, City of Aurora, Lifeworks NW in Oregon, Columbia River Mental Health Services in Vancouver Washington, Aspire Health Partners, Columbia Community Mental Health in Columbia County Oregon, Impact Behavioral Health Partners, City of Madison CARES Team, City of Norfolk Community Services Board, Trillium Family Services, Turning Point Behavioral Health Care Center, City of Oakland – MACRO, City of San Francisco, Central City Concern or Portland, CommUnity Crisis Services of Iowa City, TERROS and the Flagstaff Fire Department, and Racine County in Wisconsin.
“We show up differently than law enforcement, where situations can escalate and someone ends up with a low-level charge and lands in jail. We are trying to shift the response from one of enforcement to one of care.”
https://news.microsoft.com/features/how-communities-are-creating-more-equitable-justice-systems-with-a-focus-on-mental-health/
