The San Antonio Community Outreach and Resiliency Effort (SA CORE) program, which aims to de-escalate behavioral health crises and connect residents with mental health services, has nearly finished its first full month of 24/7 coverage of San Antonio.
The SA CORE program launched 24/7 coverage on July 1, two years after it was first piloted with a single team that only covered the center of the city. Now, three teams of a San Antonio Police Department officer, a San Antonio Fire Department paramedic, and a Center for Health Care Services mental health clinician respond to mental health calls across San Antonio.
At a June San Antonio City Council Public Safety meeting, the city’s Chief Mental Health Officer Jessie Higgins said the program was a great success, and that new members of the SA CORE team being onboarded at the time were inspiring.
“I just see so much passion and renewed vigor in their respective fields for what they’re doing,” she said.
Since Jan. 1, the SA CORE teams have operated 16 hours per day, seven days a week. Between January and April of this year, the three teams working on that schedule responded to 1,224 calls for service.
A key part of how the program works is the follow up with residents. Of the 1,224 responses they’ve made, nearly a third of residents were connected to some form of mental health or social services. Another 30% could not be found for follow ups, declined services, or gave invalid contact information.
Only four were arrested.
At the June council meeting, District 2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez asked how many times force had been used by SA CORE team members on residents. The answer was fewer than five times.
“We’re seeing less violent interactions through the SA CORE program and that’s really exciting, because should we not have this?” McKee-Rodriguez said.
Despite the program’s success at connecting residents to services and its exceedingly low rate of arrests and use of force, its primary shortfall is that it can only handle a fraction of all mental health calls in San Antonio, which have been steadily rising year after year.
In 2019, there were 21,496 mental health calls to 911 in San Antonio. In 2023, there were 32,452.
The 24/7 coverage that began in July should increase the amount of calls for service the SA CORE teams respond to, but they will likely still only be able to respond to a few thousand calls per year until more teams are added.
