Eugene’s first responders are being taxed by non-emergency calls and many people who may be in need of the kind of help CAHOOTS used to provide are going without.
That’s the conclusion of a new city report examining how the city has fared since it and White Bird Clinic mutually ended their contract in April. The CAHOOTS (Crisis Response Helping Out on the Streets) program dispatched a two-person team made of a mental health provider and a medic to a wide scope of calls in Eugene, sometimes in conjunction with, usually instead of, police officers of firefighters.
Local police, fire, and behavioral health workers have tried to step up, but a gap remains…