Hello, everyone.
Thank you so much for being here on a really positive, positive note at the end of our year to announce once again another expansion of our HealthONE program, which is exciting and which is really such been an important part of standing up new alternatives for public safety in our region.
One of the best things about being mayor has been to be able to be at things like this, to meet the people who are actually doing the services for the people of the city of Seattle, to be looking at the innovations that we have.
And today's a really exciting time for me.
It's another really big step that our city is taking.
Council Member Herbal, thank you for being here.
I know.
She traveled.
This is how important this is and how monumental for our city.
Councilmember Herbold, who's chair of public safety, who is on what we call the accidental island of West Seattle, knows how important it is to get here for this because it marks such an important time for our city.
You know, it was over two years ago B.
C. Before Cove it in November of 2019 that Chief Scoggins and I and then former Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw announced our first pilot program downtown of Health One.
to have a new approach to behavioral crisis intervention.
You know, I had seen as mayor, as we looked at the data, there were so many calls for crisis intervention, when one of the only tools we had was to have police respond to that call when they came into 911. And police had such few remedies.
They could either take a person to jail, or take them to Harborview Hospital, when sometimes we needed a different approach.
And so we created HealthONE to really have that kind of approach that's behavioral science based, And a medic and a social worker come, and they can spend as much time as they want to determine what is the right solution for that incident.
Since that time, we know that we've been looking for other new models for 911, but we didn't have to look far.
to see what was working and what was effective.
And we know that the pilot program of HealthONE was enormously effective, and it was so well-received by every part of our community.
So one of the first thing we do is did a second one so we could cover more of the city.
And today, I'm so proud to announce, with council's strong support and the community's strong support, that another HealthONE unit is going to be ready and put into service.
This third unit, Health 1, Unit 3, will serve South Seattle.
Unit 3 will respond out of a location in Mount Baker, here.
and will serve Mount Baker, Rainier Valley, Beacon Hill, and the Central District neighborhoods with some additional coverage in Pioneer Square as they're able to do it and as needed.
It's really going to be up to the crew's professional discretion and obviously the number of 911 calls we get, but we will be able to start this in 2022. I'm really happy that we're able to hand new mayor-elect Harrell Yet another great tool to help the people of Seattle.
All three HealthONE units will have the same level of staffing and equipment that we know works.
Two specially trained firefighter EMTs and a social worker.
And I will tell you that having the capacity of having someone in to work with those EMTs has been such a critical component of it.
The SUV itself will be equipped with all the necessary medical equipment that we have, plus outreach resources, food, drinks, clothing, and a list of ways to connect people up with services that they may need.
It is going to be really, you're gonna hear from the head of our human services department, because our aging and disability case services often is who has to step in in these places.
I have to say that these last 21 months have been so hard for the people of Seattle.
There's not a single family, a single person, a single business that hasn't been impacted.
But it's also impacted our city service workers, our firefighters and police who've been on the front lines working every day to keep the community safe.
And I will want to thank again Chief Scoggins for all the leadership that he has exercised during the pandemic as we first had firefighters stand up the first in the nation testing of first responders for first responders and then expanding that to our senior centers where we saw such quick devastation to then free testing for the city of Seattle where we have been offered 1.2 million free test 60% of Seattle residents use those testing sites, and then helping to stand up vaccinations.
This day, Seattle, despite being the first in, has the lowest incidence of COVID, hospitalization, and mortality rate of any city in America.
And that's a testament to the hard work that city workers, including the fire department, the police department, our parks department, everyone working together to keep people safe.
I also want to acknowledge for the firefighter family, they have suffered two heavy losses of friends and coworkers in the last month.
that have, on top of all the work they've done, has made it really challenging for them, because they're like a family.
And even through that grief, they pulled together to help those families, but never forgot about their service to the people of Seattle.
So I want to thank them for that work, too, and not lose sight of the great and remarkable things, positive things, we're continuing to be able to do through the pandemic, including building out this HealthONE program.
And with that, I'm going to turn it now over to Councilmember Herbold, who has a few things to say.
Greetings.
Hello, everybody.
So back in April, I was with many of these same folks at the fire station 17 in the university district announcing the expansion of this program to health to and also promising at that time.
that we'd expand to health three before the end of the year.
And lo and behold, here we are.
Thank you for getting us here.
Expansion to the third unit is fantastic.
When the mayor proposed the 2021 budget in September of 2019, 2020, she had included funding for the second expansion.
And the council in deliberation said, you know, we reached out to the fire department.
We asked, do you think we could do a third one?
And lo and behold, we were able to do it.
And it's really a testament to the work of everybody in the executive department, everybody in the fire department under the leadership of Chief Scoggins.
and also the work of the Human Services Department to really work on creating those linkages with folks who have expertise in case management for this population of folks.
And many thanks to Interim Director Kim as well for her help in getting that happening.
This program is a really integral part of our crisis response and is needed more now than ever.
So behavioral health calls can be redirected towards the folks who have expertise and are best capable of assisting individuals in need.
As the mayor explained, the fire department previously responded to this sort of 9-1-1 call with a fully staffed engine, ladder, or aid car, yet only half the time did those type of 9-1-1 calls to fire department actually need that response at all.
So when I joined HealthONE on a ride along in the springtime, I was really amazed.
I had the chance to experience firsthand how an immediate response by a team of case managers and firefighters was so much better able to connect that individual that they were helping with necessary care and services.
This was an example of a low acuity call that just a couple years prior without HealthONE might have resulted in the use of scarce resources that are much better focused elsewhere.
So now that we've added capacity through Health 2 and Health 3, we're now really focused our efforts on updating our dispatch protocols so that even more calls for wellness checks and person down responses can also be diverted when it's safe to do that.
All of this work is part of the city's overall strategy that also includes our partnership with King County to fund the downtown emergency service center mobile crisis response teams, council's initiative to reestablish and then expand with the mayor's support, the Seattle Police Department's community service officer program, and the investments that we've made through a couple budget processes so far in the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, and the Critical Incident Responders Program operated by Community Passageways.
All of this work is really focused on monitoring safety in high-risk areas and responding to incidents of crisis and violence in partnership with local law enforcement.
These are all really critical programs to get us closer in right-sizing our crisis response.
So fire and police at a time when their staffing resources are greatly reduced so that they can actually refocus their resources to their core functions and reduce the chance of the combination of an armed police response and individuals in the throes of behavioral health crises.
leading to tragic outcomes.
And so, again, I just want to thank everybody who's been working on getting us to this next stage.
There's a lot more work to be done.
Thank you, Mayor Durkan, for also acknowledging former city council member Sally Bagshaw's leadership in this area, helping us launch this program in the first place.
And also want to really recognize all of the critical work that the fire department has been doing in so many different areas, in addition to this launch at this really difficult time, both with the trauma-inducing work that they do every day, as well as the trauma induced by recent tragic loss that the Seattle Fire Department family has recently experienced.
I'm very indebted to their work on behalf of the residents of our city.
Thank you.
And with that, I'll hand it over to Chief Spivans.
Good afternoon.
My name is Charles Goggins, Fire Chief of the Seattle Fire Department.
I want to leave with a thank you to our mayor for her leadership and trust in the fire department and the partnerships that we've had along the way, and also for taking the time to acknowledge our loss.
As the mayor mentioned, we've had a hard couple of months.
We have had four of our firefighters pass away.
Starting in October with Lieutenant Willie Cabobot, who passed away of cancer.
And then just before Thanksgiving, Lieutenant Luis Barriola, who also passed away.
And then you've all seen the search on the news of Deputy Chief Jay Shrekengas, 31-year member of the Seattle Fire Department.
And we honored his family this past Sunday.
And then most recently, one week ago yesterday, Firefighter Matt Runty.
all contributed so much to the department and the community and just thank you to the community for all your condolences that we've received as a department.
On Health 3, you know, it was in February of 2018 and I know John remembers this, we invited about 30 of our peer departments from around the nation to come to Seattle for a one-day conference.
We wanted to understand what they were doing in this space and we heard from chiefs from from D.C.
to Texas, to San Diego, to Utah, even to Vancouver, B.C. And that's when, you know, we really started to put HealthONE together.
And in November of 2019, we were actually able to launch that first unit.
And it was as we expected.
You know, it really helped provide a better service to the community.
You know, this year here in 2021, we're tracking right now to run about 90,000 responses in the Seattle Fire Department.
About 20,000 of those responses in the Seattle Fire Department are fire related.
And then about 10 to 12,000 of those additional responses are ALS.
So our medics go, they're the lead, they're the point, they're critical care that's needed.
So about 55 to 60,000 calls are what we call BLS calls.
What we also know is 37% of that number that's left are low acuity calls, and many of them really don't require a 911 response.
And that's where we came up with the concept and the idea that another response was needed.
You know, so far this year, Health 1 and Health 2, they've responded to close to 1,800 responses.
Now, this is pretty important to note because our BLS responses normally, they take about 17 or 18 minutes.
Once we're on scene, that's how long, how average time we spend on scene.
Our Health 1 unit spends about 45 to 50 minutes on scene.
All over the city, they have about a 10-minute response time in the areas.
But what that does is it allows them to start to work the problem, to help the person through the critical situation that they're dealing with.
What we know is about 20% of those calls that Health 1 and Health 2 respond on, some of those still result in an emergency department visit.
And we have the resources.
We have the aid cars and the medic units.
So we're able to get them there.
But the other 80% don't.
10% of those calls that they go on, they're able to get to a clinic, to a shelter, to a family member.
So that's another 10% that we're getting to an alternative space.
And then the balance of the 70%, they're really solving problems on scene.
And that's really important for us.
Sometimes people need a meal.
Our team knows how to set up a meal delivery plan.
Sometimes they need their prescriptions filled.
Sometimes they need to reconnect with their care providers.
Sometimes they need an appointment set up for the next couple of days.
Seventy percent of the time, those are the problems that they're solving on scene.
So those calls don't result in a 911 call.
Now with this third unit that's going to be coming online in early 22, we're really excited to serve the south end part of the city.
What we know now is every one of our aid cars in the city and every one of our fire engines in the city has made a referral to HealthONE.
That's pretty significant.
That's the fire engines in West Seattle, in North Seattle, in the U District, all over the city.
Our resources are calling for HealthONE to help them work a problem.
That's pretty important.
But we know some of the fire stations that call them the most.
Fire Station 30, right here, we're here today, Fire Station 6 in the Central District, and Fire Station 28 down on Rainier.
So it makes a lot of sense that we're putting our third unit right here in this district.
So we're really excited about the potential of the program and how it continues to grow, and how we look forward to continue to grow in it.
Because we know that when we get the right people on scene that have the time to work the problem, then we can help solve the problem.
And I really want to give a shout out to John Ehrenfeld, who's been the architect of this program and our mobile integrated health program for the last five and a half years.
He's really made the difference.
This is what it takes when you have a person who has a really good idea, you listen, and then you figure out how to try to execute on the idea.
So thank you, John.
And right now, I'd like to turn it over to Local 27 Vice President Liam Rooney.
Hello, everybody.
My name is Liam Roney.
I am a 14-year veteran of the Seattle Fire Department.
I am assigned to Ladder 3 in the Central District, which covers this area.
I'm also a member of the Mobile Integrated Health Unit, as well as vice president of Local 27. Kenny Stewart couldn't be here today, so I'm here representing the 1,000 Seattle firefighters and paramedics to announce the expansion of the Mobile Integrated Health Unit with this new Health 3 response unit serving South Seattle.
This is particularly special for me.
I grew up in this neighborhood.
I thought I knew every nook and cranny being a kid here until I got assigned to the fire department.
Then I learned there's a whole lot more to the neighborhood than you realize just being a resident.
And that understanding was deepened tremendously when I started the Mobile Integrated Health Unit.
You see all the cracks in the system.
I want to thank Mayor Durkin for her leadership in making public safety a priority and her role in HealthONE program.
I also want to thank Chief Scoggins and John Ehrenfeld for their continued management of this invaluable program.
But mostly, I want to thank the local 27 firefighters and the social workers that work with us, providing this service, being the boots on the ground with our most vulnerable citizens, day in and day out.
We describe low acuity as non-emergent, but that doesn't mean there isn't a great need.
It's very difficult work and it requires a very scrappy tenacity that we found in the social workers and they found in us has built a very effective partnership dealing with these problems.
HealthONE addresses low acute responses and connects individuals directly with the services they need so that we firefighters in operations can focus on fire suppression and being available for heart attacks, car wrecks, and all other manner of time critical life threatening emergencies that require the skills, equipment, and staffing we provide.
This is a solid common sense program that is extremely effective.
Firefighters have been on the front lines dealing with people suffering from mental health issues, homelessness, and addiction since this crisis began.
We have a unique perspective on what's needed and what practical solutions are.
Because we respond seven days a week, or 52 weeks a year, wherever people are, whenever they need us the most.
We meet people where they are and provide professional, respectful, and culturally competent care to help solve their problems.
We are excited that Seattle is expanding the HealthONE program because our city needs to lead with common sense initiatives that prioritize public safety, deliver appropriate effective services to the people that need them, and the HealthONE program is an integral step in doing that.
And I also want to thank Mayor and Chief Scoggins for mentioning our members of our firefighter family, local 27 members and 2898 members who we've lost recently.
Namely, Willie Cabobot, Louie Badiola, Jay Schreckengast, and most recently, my friend Matt Runty.
So with that, thank you everyone, and I'd like to pass it over to Health and Services Director Kim.
Good morning.
Thank you, Vice President, Local 27, Rony.
Really appreciate the introduction.
And I want to say that I'm here as the acting director of the Human Services Department.
And many of my colleagues and I, we like to come to work and put our heads down and do the work.
But we're really honored to be here today to publicly stand in solidarity with the mayor's office, with council, and with the fire department because we're really excited about expanding HealthONE and here to talk about our role that you've heard about already.
The Seattle Human Services Department, you may know us for supporting food insecurity, homelessness, youth development, but in this case, we're so pleased to really highlight a program that we're really proud of and offering our social workers.
We're here for the Seattle and King County community to offer resources and solutions during times of need so that we can all live and learn and work in Seattle and take part in strong and healthy communities.
As you've heard, HealthONE centers underserved, underrepresented, and marginalized individuals.
They are oftentimes members of the community who have fallen through the crack and are unable to effectively advocate for themselves with the resources that do exist for a variety of reasons.
So together, as you have heard, our social workers, a couple of them are here today, work alongside our firefighters for the HealthONE efforts, and we have this beautiful rig behind us.
Our social workers are highly skilled at connecting vulnerable, mostly older adults, with services and supports they need for stability.
They fill service gaps as you have heard for service gaps for first responders to free up fire personnel to respond to other emergencies as described.
And I do want to acknowledge Riley and Greg who are social workers here with us today.
And I have to say I also went on a ride along recently just coincidentally and I was able to go to West Seattle and visit someone and I observed the connection that our firefighter and our social worker had with our customer and I saw the communication that was occurring and I know that there was follow-up that occurred to prevent additional incidents or to support the person in the future and so that was really special and honored that I was able to do that.
Health One's emphasis is on communities that are more likely to experience disparities in health care, social services, and other social determinants of health.
And you know the city of Seattle cares very deeply about racial equity, and those disparities persist.
Some stats.
Chief Scoggins went over a lot.
I'll offer a couple more.
95% of our clients are on public insurance or are uninsured.
95%.
With an average client age of 61, HealthONE crews are more likely to serve older clients who may struggle with mobility, setting up appointments, and securing in-home care, all the things that we need in order to prevent that next incident.
HealthONE disproportionately serves black, African-American, and American Indian Alaska Native clients relative to our city's overall population.
So again, disparity.
As mentioned, many of our clients are experiencing homelessness.
About 50% Of the other remaining 50%, many are formally homeless or they're experiencing, you know, unstable housing.
They're housing insecure.
And finally, 60% of the mobile integrated health teams clients are reported to adult protective services as vulnerable adults.
And so bottom line is that this work is very important.
We're doing the critical work.
It is very smart, effective, and also it's the heart work of the city.
And so with that, on behalf of the Human Services Department, we're just pleased to be here and say that we're here in solidarity with the Fire Department and really honored to continue supporting the collaborative work as we grow in the future.
So thank you.
And I believe we're back to Mayor Durkan.
Thanks, Tonya, and thanks to everyone else.
Liam, thank you so much, and extend my personal gratitude to every firefighter in the union.
Look, we are, before I open up for questions, I just want to say again is, this exemplifies what good teamwork and collaboration looks like.
Because it is a seamless job that works between not just the EMTs and the social worker responding, but 911 knowing who to dispatch and determining whether the Seattle Police Department needs to be dispatched instead.
We have seen in the last two years a lot of good ideas on how to reimagine public safety, but one thing I think we have to really understand as a truth is It's not a choice between police and other alternatives.
We have to have both.
And this gives us another tool in our arsenal where we can have somebody roll to a scene that can take the time that Chief Scoggins has said, just to see what's going on, on a human dynamic, what does a person need, and have a response that can make us healthier as a city.
And it works together with all those other investments, including the ones Councilmember Herbold's mentioned, to really invest in a healthy, resilient community.
Because in the long term, that is what provides us public safety.
Having access to health care, to good pre-K, to good education, to educational opportunity, to employment opportunity, to affordable housing.
All of those things have to work together.
Working with this, you hear the statistics on how many people that we have to serve in this space are experiencing homelessness.
And in the last four years, I'm so proud of the work we've done with the Office of Housing, with our service providers and other, that we've done $2.5 billion in affordable housing.
7,600 new units.
Greater productivity in affordable housing than any other time in Seattle's history.
But yet we know it's not enough.
So all of these things have to work together.
And I'm enormously thankful to the firefighters who here and across the city and also to the Seattle police officers who every day are responding to the calls that they have in great numbers to any questions.
Mhm.
So I think that the statistics you just heard, and Tanya, you can do it, is a majority of the calls that we get for the HealthONE, those people are experiencing homelessness.
Is that right?
Fifty percent.
And then for the other 50 percent, have they experienced homelessness previously or are they experiencing it now?
How much of the expansion do you think will help?
And obviously we have a homelessness crisis, so how much of this is really going to make a dent in that issue?
I think the question was how much of this will make a dent in the homelessness crisis that we're facing.
I said when we rolled out the first one that my prediction was everybody will want one of these in every fire station in Seattle because it just gives us such an important tool and it really is the medic one of the urban environment now because medic one became a, you know, we led here, still the safest place in America to have a heart attack because of that incredible program.
This is a model that gets to another reality of urban life, but it has to work together with those other things I'm talking.
So my prediction is, I could be wrong, is that you will see an increasing expansion of this program and you will have HealthONE in most fire stations, but certainly in every part of the city, because it can respond with a different set of tools.
When you have two trained EMTs and a social worker, it just gives you the ability to help people in a different way.
And with that, you know, we've got to change how 911 dispatches, right?
As we get more tools available, they'll ask different questions so that they get the right people in place to solve the situation.
Great, so the question was how many do we anticipate having and with the shortage of mental health care workers and social workers will that be an impairment?
First, again, I believe we need many more of these.
And I think that they will be an integral part of what a public safety response looks like, not just in the future of Seattle, but the future of every urban environment.
So I think you will have these throughout the city.
And of course, you know, we are both health one and all of the things we're doing that require either mental health workers or trained outreach workers.
You know, those people have been overtaxed, too.
It has been extraordinarily hard in that sphere.
But I think that working with the Department of Human Services and the Fire Department, success makes people want to come.
And I urge you to talk to the social workers because they can see the good that they're doing, and people want to be able to contribute.
So I think, one, obviously we've got to pay the right wages, we've got to recruit the right people, get them the right training, but I think this program is so invaluable and will be one that people look at as really a gold standard, that that itself will be something that will attract people to do it.
Yeah, I am.
I am really I can't be more enthused about what the governor proposed at the end of last session.
We saw the money that they got from the cares act and worked with the governors to try to see if we can get the legislature to appropriate it last year, and they couldn't.
So I think that the governor has acknowledged this is a statewide issue.
I signed a letter together with the mayors from all over the state, Spokane, Vancouver, Bremerton.
asking the governor and the legislature to act.
That money, we know it works.
We've had it here in Seattle, the rapid acquisition.
If we can buy a building that's already constructed, we can put it to use more quickly to help people.
And we cannot scale it alone.
Seattle can't shoulder this problem.
So the Regional Homeless Authority and the state and the federal government need to play a big role.
So I'm hoping that the legislature takes it up as one of the first things they do.
They don't wait to the end of the session.
And then they say that we have to do this just as a start, because this is so important to the health of Seattle and every city in Washington state.
And I have a quick follow-up, too.
Prime Minister Herbold and Mayor, you mentioned a little bit about how, you know, this means SPD doesn't need to respond to certain calls.
Does this — we have seen some responsibilities being shifted out of SPD.
Does this also kind of signal a continuation of that, of some responsibilities in the long-term needing to follow under SPD's grant?
So we may have different answers to that.
I think they augment each other.
And we have been innovating since I've been mayor and before this.
What are those areas where we can transfer responsibility or have a different?
What it does not do is reduce the need for police.
In order for Seattle to be safe, we need deployable officers in the range of 1,400 officers if we want to serve all of Seattle 24-7.
But we don't want to have to just have police respond.
We want to have more tools.
So I think this gives us, together with some of the things that Councilmember Herbold said is, you know, we've got our violence interrupters like Community Passageway.
We're working together with some of the parents of murdered children who've lost children so they can be a better voice.
We're working with our school system.
We're doing all of those things working together to really invest in community at the root level.
And at the end of the day, then, hopefully, we will have, you know, the ability that an armed police response isn't the only response.
And I think if you talk to many police officers, they will tell you, Their job has changed.
If you look at the number of crisis intervention call that our police handle on just a daily basis, that's not the best use of them, and it makes their jobs inordinately more difficult.
And so if we have something like this to respond, it's a win-win for everyone.
Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly.
It's both and.
And in addition to health one, we're working with the executive departments in the fire department and standing up a third option, which is referred to colloquially as triage one.
And that's for the person down and wellness calls.
We're working on standing that up and working together with the police department to identify other calls that they agree.
that they don't need to respond to.
And just to follow up to your earlier question, the council has asked for a report from the executive mid-year 2022 on an additional expansion to a fourth and fifth unit.
There you have it.
Thank you very much.
I want to appreciate everyone.
Again, I want to thank the chief.
And I want to call out John because it's the last time we'll be together.
It's sometimes not an enviable thing to come to the office of the mayor, because I started talking to the chief about what can we do that's different, and he said, we have an idea, let's come make a presentation.
John had thought through it.
He'd used the data.
He thought about what the response would be.
He talked to the people in the field.
We wouldn't have this program if we hadn't had that kind of thoughtful approach on solutions base.
And I have to just, the people in Seattle should be so proud that we, John's not alone.
We got a lot of Johns working for city government who every day are thinking about how do we do it better?
But for this particular topic, John, I want to thank you.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Have a good holiday season.