Editor’s note: As agencies nationwide work to improve their response to crisis calls, this series looks at co-responder models showing the clearest results. We previously looked at what most police leaders get wrong about co-responder programs and the reasons why programs may fail and strategies to ensure success. In this article, we look at what it takes to move a co-responder program beyond the pilot phase and ensure it survives leadership turnover, political pressure and funding battles.
Across the country, some of the most effective co-responder programs aren’t scaling — they’re fighting to survive. Not because outcomes failed, but because leadership changed and protections disappeared. Programs that were once thriving are now being quietly dismantled through budget shifts, staffing decisions and policy changes that have nothing to do with results.
Chiefs need to understand one fundamental truth: if a co-responder program isn’t structurally protected, it won’t survive success.
Moving beyond the pilot phase isn’t about proving the concept. It’s about building a program strong enough to withstand command turnover, political pressure and competing systems that want control.
| RELATED: Why most co-responder programs fail and how to build one that works
Command ownership decides survival
Durable programs require a ranking sworn supervisor who owns the co-responder program within the department and understands street operations. That supervisor should work in close partnership with a senior co-responder lead or unit director, but authority cannot be outsourced.
Programs begin to falter when oversight is assigned to someone disconnected from current patrol realities or positioned in the role as a temporary assignment without long-term investment. When staffing, schedules or budgets shift, programs without sworn leadership lose protection quickly because no one with operational authority is invested in defending them.
Durability also depends on protecting the supervisor’s career path. Serving as the sworn leader of a co-responder unit cannot become a professional ceiling. Departments need succession planning, cross-training and a bench of future supervisors so leadership can rotate without weakening the program. When command treats co-response leadership as promotable, respected work, strong leaders step forward. When it’s treated as a career cul-de-sac, credibility erodes.
Mental health professionals alone do not hold that leverage inside a police organization. Mental health first responders embedded within command structures do — as do chiefs and officers who hold rank.
Programs last when command treats co-response as an operational asset rather than a side project.
Mental health first response isn’t clinical treatment
This role is not therapy. It is public safety. There are no fees, no billing and no treatment plans. Mental health first responders triage, de-escalate, place individuals into the next appropriate level of care and provide follow-up when necessary. Licensure does not predict readiness for this work. Field competence does.
Requiring licensure for a first-response role limits hiring, increases costs and reduces access, particularly in rural and regional communities. Those areas often carry a disproportionate share of severe mental illness with little or no access to ongoing care, making sound clinical judgment in the field non-negotiable.
At minimum, master’s-level professionals with strong clinical training in social work, psychology or closely related disciplines consistently perform best. They have completed supervised clinical training in mental health and substance use, can assess risk under pressure, build rapport quickly and function effectively within law enforcement culture.
Bachelor’s-level roles do not include supervised clinical training or sustained exposure to severe mental illness and complex substance use. That gap increases safety risks, decision-making errors and liability in the field.
Mental health first response demands judgment, situational awareness and the ability to operate within command direction in unpredictable environments. States and counties that recognize this reality build stronger, more sustainable programs.
Embedded models need structural protection
As embedded co-responder programs expand, state mental health agencies are increasingly promoting mobile crisis models under their control. Mobile teams can play a role, but they typically arrive later. By the time they respond, the crisis window has often closed and acceptance of support drops sharply.
Embedded models succeed because they arrive in real time, when the call is active and the opportunity for engagement is highest.
Communities need triage immediately, and when a higher level of care is necessary, access must follow within hours or days — not weeks. Once that window closes, acceptance drops and the crisis cycles back to patrol.
A common challenge in many mobile and treatment-based models is that performance is measured by intake volume rather than resolved outcomes. This dynamic spans mental health treatment, substance use treatment and mixed behavioral health systems. High volume may look impressive on paper, but low impact shows up on the street. Intake becomes the metric of success, even when actual care may not begin for weeks or months, if it begins at all.
During that gap, nothing stabilizes. Calls return. Patrol encounters the same names, the same addresses and the same unresolved crises. Chiefs should demand outcome-based measures rather than intake-based claims, because volume without resolution only reinforces the repeat-call cycle.
Inpatient hospitalizations do not close this gap either. Most inpatient units provide short-term stabilization, not long-term care. Individuals are discharged once they are safe, not once they are supported. Without rapid follow-up and coordinated wraparound services, the crisis resumes in the community and returns to patrol.
Embedded mental health first responders help close that gap because they have already built vetted, responsive relationships across systems. They move individuals to the right next step quickly and remain engaged long enough to reduce repeat calls.
These programs maneuver around systemic barriers because they are built for public safety, not system preservation — and that distinction matters.
It also explains why funding battles are emerging. Embedded programs shift resources toward public safety, while centralized mobile models retain funding within state systems. Systems rewarded for volume will continue producing volume. Systems accountable for outcomes are compelled to solve problems.
Chiefs must recognize this reality. Programs that lack structural protection remain vulnerable to policy shifts unrelated to performance. Embedded co-responder programs must be recognized, funded and protected as first-responder functions.
City, county and regional models can all work
Some programs are city-based. Others operate countywide or regionally. All can succeed. They tend to fail when authority, funding and accountability are fragmented.
In rural areas especially, no single department may have sufficient resources to staff a unit alone, making county or regional collaboration essential. Scale matters less than clarity.
Someone must own the program. Someone must control the budget. Someone must answer for outcomes. If a chief cannot sketch the reporting structure in 30 seconds, governance is not clear enough. Regional models also require a single point of supervision and communication, even when responders are geographically dispersed. Without that structure, even well-designed programs collapse.
Protecting responders without undermining trust
Mental health first responders do not wear body cameras, and when they work independently there is no recording because no officer is present.
That distinction is significant. Recording mental health conversations undermines confidentiality and damages trust. This work depends on rapport, honesty and de-escalation at moments when people are most vulnerable. Surveillance alters the interaction and weakens outcomes.
When complaints arise, applying traditional law enforcement accountability mechanisms to mental health first responders can create more risk than clarity. It invites false equivalence, compromises confidentiality and subjects responders to investigative processes designed for enforcement actions rather than crisis engagement.
Durable programs address this through clear policy, structured documentation standards, defined supervision and transparent complaint review processes. Liability protection comes from structure and command backing — not from recording every interaction or relying on investigative shortcuts that were never intended for crisis response. Programs that fail to establish these protections early leave their teams exposed when scrutiny emerges.
Define the calls and train everyone
Programs struggle when no one clearly understands what the unit is designed to handle.
Dispatch, patrol, supervisors and command must share clear activation criteria for co-response. Patrol retains legal authority and control of the scene; mental health first responders augment patrol rather than replace it.
During pilot phases, co-responders often take every call because criteria have not yet been refined. As programs mature, leaders must define which calls the unit can meaningfully resolve and which fall outside its scope. Without that clarity, confusion spreads and the unit is blamed for issues it was never intended to fix.
Clear documentation, collateral information and effective follow-up processes ensure continuity even when the unit is not directly involved. Undefined roles create friction. Clear call definitions build trust.
Referrals are where credibility is won or lost
Warm handoffs are operational necessities.
A warm handoff means establishing a real-time connection during or immediately after the call, rather than handing off a phone number and hoping for follow-through. When referrals fail, both officers and co-responders absorb the consequences.
Poor referrals do more than fail individuals — they retrain behavior. Officers stop referring. Co-responders stop trusting the system. Improvised solutions replace coordinated ones, often outside the local region, simply because they produce results.
Successful programs cultivate a vetted provider network that answers calls, returns messages and responds after hours, when crises do not wait for business schedules. Moving individuals without meaningful support makes the department appear ineffective and erodes family trust quickly.
Trust is built one successful referral at a time, and strong referral pathways reinforce community confidence because people see tangible results.
Co-response is a new profession
Mental health first responders are not simply repurposed clinicians. The role requires individuals who can operate fluently in both worlds — law enforcement culture and mental health triage, safety planning and command structure, rapid decision-making and human connection.
Hiring for field readiness outweighs résumé strength. Programs that overlook this reality struggle with retention, credibility and internal resistance. Some departments address this by building internship pipelines with vetted graduate programs to cultivate field-ready candidates and maintain a sustainable hiring bench.
Programs don’t die loudly
Most co-responder programs are not formally shut down; they are gradually weakened. Units become isolated. Office space changes. Schedules shift. Visibility declines. Referrals slow. Staffing erodes. Momentum fades.
Leaders who question the place of mental health first responders in policing often communicate that belief structurally rather than verbally.
Programs survive when command integrates them fully, protects them intentionally and treats them as the operational assets they are.
Beyond the pilot means beyond optics
Pilots demonstrate feasibility. Durable programs withstand chief turnover, political pressure and funding disputes.
That level of stability requires sworn and ranking leadership, defined authority, realistic hiring standards, protected funding, clear call criteria and policies built for first response rather than institutional convenience.
Anything less is not a failure of effort. It is a leadership decision to let a working program die.
