The Human Service Center has received a crisis response grant from the state to help improve mental health crisis responses, especially in area schools.
The Department of Health Services announced 15 counties received the grants. The Human Service Center is based in Rhinelander and serves mental health needs in Oneida, Forest and Vilas counties.
DHS spokesperson Joyce Allen says the grants are intended to improve local service. She says the agencies getting the grants need to look at their local response services, identify efforts that aren't working as well as they hoped, and develop a rapid response project to improve their system so more people who have a crisis can get that service.
She says the Human Service Center application focused on programming with the schools in their district..
"...They said in their application that they had over 18 different schools to work with. That's a challenge when you have that much territory and that many schools to work with. They have identified working with various schools so they have the information they need about the role of the mobile crisis team and how the school staff can assist those teams and how those schools can set up school crisis response teams. What are those tools the schools can use to evaluate, as an example, the risk of student suicides in their own communities..."
The grant was for $20,000
