- November 18, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
The calls come in to the Sheriff’s Office all the time: a teenager harming himself, a woman threatening suicide, a man flying into a rage at a neighbor or family member.
It takes deputies hours to deal with such “Baker Act” cases — where someone is deemed a threat to themselves of others — because they have to drive the person to a state Baker Act receiving facility, and the nearest two are each about an hour away, in Volusia County.
But that long drive is about to get shorter, at least for local deputies.
The Flagler County Commission voted unanimously at its regular Monday-morning meeting to make Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Healthcare the designated administrator of a $1.2 million grant program to transport adult Baker Act patients from a local facility to one of the two Baker Act receiving facilities in Volusia County.
Deputies would still detain Baker Act patients, but they wouldn’t lose hours of street time driving them to Volusia County.
“Instead of having one of our officers going out of the county for some time — hours and hours — a member of the Stewart-Marchman staff will be transporting the people to Volusia County to receiving facilities,” Flagler County Deputy Administrator Sally Sherman said at the meeting.
The $1.2 million will be distributed over three years, with the county contributing $100,000, a total of $20,000 of which will come from a Sheriff’s Office fund.
The county applied for the grant in December because deputies were losing so much street time to Baker Act cases. Sometimes there would be several in a day.
“We had tried to find ways of addressing our mental health and substance abuse community, and unfortunately we have not seen a decline. We’ve seen an increase,” Sherman said. “So this is really helping us better serve our citizenry here in need of those services.”
Stewart-Marchman will also drive Baker Act patients home after their release, she said, and the conditions of the grant require Stewart–Marchman to provide crisis intervention instruction for law enforcement personnel and offer extended case management or mental health assistance to Baker Act patients.
