CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank is expanding its services to hire full-time mental health experts after receiving $939,082 from the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund through the Iowa City City Council.

The organization is looking to use the money to also purchase eight vehicles for mobile crisis outreach counselors and remodel a portion of the former food bank.

“We’re currently experiencing a significant increase in mental health crises in our community,” Cindy Hewett, CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank director of services, said. “We’re averaging about 100 calls a month and that’s just continuing to increase.”

The Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund is a part of the $18.3 million that the city received through the American Rescue Plan Act.

CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank will use the money to expand their Mobile Crisis Outreach program, Hewett said. The program dispatches mental health experts to homes, schools, and businesses to address mental health crises.

“Additional funding will allow us to increase our capacity and be able to respond appropriately to the increasing demand that we’re seeing for mental health and crisis response in our community,” Hewett said.

Having three counselors with access to cars would allow for quicker response time, Hewett said.

“By having this fleet of vehicles, we will be able to respond more quickly just directly from our homes or from the office and with that company vehicle. So, we anticipate cutting our response time down pretty significantly right now,” Hewett said.

CommUnity’s current response time is 24 minutes to respond to a crisis, Hewett said, but the organization is hoping to decrease this to a 15-minute response time.

Some of CommUnity’s goals are aligned with those of the Iowa City Police Department and its Preliminary Plan to Accelerate Community Policing.

Hewett said that having the mental health liaison in place at the police department will make sure that police officers are not the first response to mental health calls.

The police reform plan came out of a 2020 resolution made by the Iowa City City Council. The resolution was aimed to address systemic racism and restructure the police department.

“Their mission aligns with the City’s goals of diverting mental health crisis calls from police –– when appropriate –– as laid out in the Preliminary Plan,” Lee Hermiston, Iowa City’s Public Information Officer wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan.

Iowa City police officers are encouraged to call CommUnity when a potential mental health crisis rises.

“Our collaboration through the Mental Health Liaison, Joah Seelos, is already paying dividends by ensuring those experiencing a mental health crisis are being connected with the resources they need,” Hermiston wrote.