As Canada marks Mental Health Week, there is a program in Norfolk County that’s not only improving lives, but also changing how mental health crises are handled in the community.
We spoke with Kate VanBrandt, a registered nurse and clinician with the Mobile Crisis Response Team (MCRT), who partners directly with Norfolk County OPP officers to respond to emergency calls.
The MCRT program pairs mental health professionals like VanBrandt with police officers to attend 911 calls, especially those involving individuals experiencing a mental health crisis.
While the program has recently started expanding across Ontario, Norfolk was one of the first communities to implement it to this scale back in 2015, making the county a trailblazer in the integration of mental health support into front-line emergency response.
She said the program has really opened her eyes to what life is like for a police officer in Norfolk County.
Officers themselves have become strong advocates of the program as well.
VanBrandt said their team can’t respond to every call, but officers are watching what they do.
The collaborative approach has also delivered measurable results.
Since the Mobile Crisis Response Team began its work in Norfolk, they have helped to ease the burden on our local hospitals and ensure that people get more appropriate care sooner.
VanBrandt told us that calls ranging from sudden death to car accidents benefit from having someone on their team on the scene to help individuals emotionally impacted by the situation.
In some cases, simply having a mental health clinician on scene can make all the difference.
As the program grows across the province, Norfolk continues to serve as a model of what happens when mental health support and public safety work hand in hand.
This Mental Health Week, the message is clear: compassionate care on the front lines is not only possible—it’s already happening here.