The Boone County Sheriff's Office is launching Kentucky's first specialized response team aimed at assisting veterans in crisis.
Eighteen deputies recently underwent training with the Cincinnati VA after the agency approached the department's police social workers about the idea. Each member of the Veteran Response Team is a veteran.
"It's designed to better assist veterans within our community in crisis through rapport building, relationship building, and commonalities of experiences that they've likely shared while serving to kind of break down some barriers and get them the best care that they need, and get them the best treatment that they may need given their specific crisis," says Major Philip Ridgell, public information officer with the sheriff's office.
The training focuses on six areas:
- Veteran suicide prevention
- Peer support
- Substance use
- PTSD
- Homelessness
- Justice-involved veterans
The Cincinnati VA tells Boone County the team is the first of its kind in the Commonwealth.
"If there's a veteran in crisis within our community, we expect a member of this Veteran Response Team to take the lead," Ridgell explains. "These types of calls can be complex, so there's no one linear way that they're going to be able to tackle each one. But what the idea behind this with the Cincinnati VA — and certainly it's our perspective too — is that brotherhood and sisterhood of military veterans breaks down a lot of trust barriers on the surface, and really allows for us to help them get the care that they need on a variety of different fronts."
As part of the training, deputies learned about all the services available to veterans through the VA. They'll also have access to specific VA services in the field when responding to an incident.
Ridgell says the agency doesn't know how many people the team may assist, but it hopes to have data to analyze in a year.
"This is something that we hope has some great success and really makes a positive impact and builds a different degree of trust in combating some of the problems that we have and that are within our community with respect to mental health problems," he concludes.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or be in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
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