ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – It’s a first for Central Florida: 911 dispatchers can now assist when someone in a mental health crisis calls for help.
In the 32825 ZIP code, part of the area the Orange County Sheriff’s Office refers to as “Sector 2″ located in the northeast corner, more people are calling with mental health concerns than anywhere else in the county.
Typically, the response to every 911 call is the same: police, fire or medical – but no longer in Orange County.
Jennifer Falco is the county’s first-ever 911 Communications Center Clinician. That’s kind of a big deal.
“Yes, it’s a big deal for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office,” Falco said.
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Falco is a licensed mental health counselor talking, and listening to, the growing number of 911 callers struggling with their mental health.
“What I do here is I work among the call takers and at times when they feel it’s more appropriate for someone that’s familiar with mental health they transfer the call to me,” Falco tells her 911 callers.
When a call comes into the 911 dispatch center, dispatchers answer, and if they determine there’s a mental health concern but it’s not an emergency, they’ll transfer the call to Falco.
Falco said most callers that end up on the line with her never expect they’d connect with a mental health professional. And she might be the first one they’ve spoken with in a while – or ever.
Falco said that’s an honor.
“Because people are sharing things with me that they otherwise might not have shared with others,” Falco said. “And they’re being vulnerable. Talking to me when they’re going through a crisis. And it’s never fun to talk about that with people. I’m in a very unique position. I can catch them in the present moment when they’re going through this crisis situation.”
Falco has three options when she speaks with a caller. She can send out the Behavioral Response Unit, a deputy/clinician or a co-responder team first introduced at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in 2021.
She can refer the caller to county-wide mental health resources with which she is familiar.
Or, Falco said she can just listen.
“That comes up when the person isn’t quite ready to access the resources,” Falco said.
Just in her first month in the Communications Center, Falco has spoken with 31 people who called 911 for help.
“I 100% feel like I’m getting results,” Falco said. “I feel like I’m genuinely helping people here.”
For most of those 31 calls to 911, Falco did not dispatch a deputy.
Sgt. Jason Gorberg, who commands the Behavioral Response Unit and was in charge of integrating Falco into the Communications Center over the past year, said everyone benefits when a deputy does not have to respond to a 911 call.
“By doing that it saves us resources, it allows the deputies to respond to more in-progress calls for service,” Gorberg said. “It also allows the citizens of Orange County to recognize that we are focusing on more in-progress calls for concerns from citizens.”
And de-escalating a mental health concern over the phone is one less in-person encounter that could go wrong.
“Absolutely, having the opportunity to have a phone conversation with someone who might be in crisis or just needs resources or for that day, it definitely drops the number of potential violent encounters with citizens of Orange County,” Gorberg said.
Currently, Falco only works during the day. At night, there is no clinician on duty and the dispatchers dispatch deputies as they normally would. The Sheriff’s Office wants to hire a second, even a third clinician so that all shifts will be covered by a mental health professional.
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