Safety is number one issue for police intervening in children experiencing mental health crisis

 

Despite the fact of understanding children’s mental issues, children and others safety is the requirement for police intervention at schools.

Comprehension of a child’s inner mental and emotional world is important to help and support them. However, in situations where children are out of control and may hurt themselves or others, police officers say they may interfere for safety.

 According to Sgt. Steve Betteridge, Public Information Officer of Windsor Police Service, police get involved when there is actual or potential physical violence.

“The police do get calls for service from time to time dealing with mental health, with people at a younger age. We deal with it in the same way as a normal incident as nothing is more important than safety,” said Betteridge. “We are not medical practitioners, we are not doctors, we cannot accrue the situation, we want to deescalate the situation and bring it to the professional that can move forward with helping whoever was calling for service.”

In Windsor, a police officer has never taken a child directly to a mental institution from school. 

According to Connie Martin, the executive director of a Maryvale Children’s Mental Health treatment centre, this will never happen in Ontario because there is a system every school follows.

“In Windsor-Essex, if the school is worried about safety, they would tell the parent to get the child to the local emergency room where they would be screened and a child psychiatrist would say that the child has to go to Maryvale hospital beds,” said Martin.

According to Martin, having the hospital beds at a children’s setting like Maryvale is a significant change in the last 20 years.

“Kids don’t think of themselves as sick,” said Martin. “They’re not in a hospital. There are hospital beds, but the kids don’t think of them as hospital beds. At Maryvale, there’s a teacher, there’s a classroom, it’s like they come into the end, the building is beautiful.” 

According to Children’s Mental Health Ontario, 28,000 children and youth in Ontario are waiting for Mental Health Services.