PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Brooke Taylor, Director of Social Work at Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project
6:00:24
·
3 min
Brooke Taylor, Director of Social Work at the Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project, testified about the need for changes in mental health crisis response in New York City. She emphasized the importance of removing police as first responders to mental health crises and including peers with lived mental health experience in response teams.
- Taylor advocated for the ability to call 988 or 911 for immediate mental health crisis response without police involvement
- She highlighted the challenges faced by social workers when dealing with clients in crisis, including the reluctance to call 911 due to potential traumatic interactions with police
- Taylor stressed the importance of aftercare support provided by B-HEARD teams, noting that many individuals are not connected to proper services after hospital visits
Brooke Taylor
6:00:24
My name is Brook sorry.
6:00:27
My name is Brook Taylor.
6:00:28
I'm the director of social work at the Urban Justice Center mental health project.
6:00:33
And I am standing with the correct crisis intervention today and calling for the New York City Police Department to be removed as first responders to mental health crisis calls and for peers.
6:00:45
People with the mental health experience to be a mandatory element of the hurt teams providing providing the services that we do, we see pure bureaucratic obstacles and communication gaps within and among the various systems, which impede our clients' access to essential services.
6:01:04
You know, in New York City, there's no way to request an immediate mental health response for a person in crisis that will not involve police officers.
6:01:12
Receiving an immediate response requires calling 911 ambulance, and that results in police involvement and potentially leads to a traumatic or even deadly interaction for our clients.
6:01:23
At any day any at any time of the day or night, New Yorkers should be able to call 988 the new federal 3 digit number for mental health crisis calls or 911 to get immediate help for themselves or someone else experiencing a mental health crisis and know that they will be met with a caring response with trained health care providers.
6:01:39
Not law enforcement agents.
6:01:42
And as a licensed social worker, I am required to intervene when a client is at risk of harming themselves.
6:01:48
Because I know about the harm that can be caused by a police responding to mental health crisis, I am always reluctant to call 911.
6:01:54
Many of my clients have disclosed to me the day or their family members have had traumatic interactions with police in the past.
6:02:00
I do everything I can to triage this situate situation in another way.
6:02:04
But when immediate response is needed, I have no other choice.
6:02:08
If I were able to call 911 or 98 and request that it be her team respond and be assured that it be here be her team would actually respond, that would make a tremendous difference.
6:02:19
I would know that a training mental health worker was gonna is my client, and that the client will get the appropriate level of mental health support.
Mark Laster
6:02:28
Tom is expired.
6:02:31
Really?
6:02:31
Alright.
Linda Lee
6:02:32
No.
6:02:32
Yeah.
6:02:33
Too many schools buy real quick.
6:02:34
I know.
6:02:35
If you could just wrap up in 1 or 2 sentences,
Brooke Taylor
6:02:38
Okay.
Sasha Myrie
6:02:40
Okay.
6:02:42
I
Brooke Taylor
6:02:45
I guess, most importantly, like, a lot of my friends who do end up going to the hospital either with police or on their own accord are not connected to aftercare services, and their mental health providers are not contacted.
6:03:01
And they're often not even admitted or discharged really quickly.
6:03:04
And so the fact that BEHARD involves that after care support is really, really huge and really important and should be available to people.
Linda Lee
6:03:15
And just on a last note, if you could make sure to include maybe if you could maybe adjust your written testimony and submit it again if you haven't, because I just want to know if you could include a couple examples of that in terms of how the aftercare hasn't worked or hasn't been connected.
6:03:34
If you could just because I was looking for some of those examples myself.
6:03:37
So if you could send that, that'd be awesome.
Brooke Taylor
6:03:40
Definitely.
6:03:40
Thank you.
