BH Co-Responder Crisis Responder Qualified Professional

📋 Description

• • Step into the passenger seat of a Buncombe County Sheriff’s cruiser and become the calm, clinical voice that turns 911 mental-health calls into moments of hope and healing. As a BH Co-Responder / Crisis Responder, you will ride alongside sworn deputies to scenes involving psychiatric crisis, substance-use emergencies, developmental-disability meltdowns, and co-occurring disorders, providing immediate on-scene assessment, de-escalation, and safety planning.
• • Within minutes of arrival you will triage risk, apply evidence-based crisis-intervention models (CIT, PFA, motivational interviewing), and decide whether the individual needs hospitalization, mobile crisis follow-up, detox placement, or simply a warm hand-off to outpatient services. Your documentation in the field becomes the legal and clinical bridge that ensures continuity of care.
• • You will serve as the single point of contact for families, schools, employers, and community providers—translating law-enforcement language into clinical recommendations and vice-versa—so that every stakeholder understands next steps. Expect to juggle phone calls from emergency departments, schedule follow-up appointments, and coordinate transportation while still on scene.
• • Beyond the 911 response, you will maintain a small caseload of high-utilizer individuals, providing short-term, community-based support to reduce repeat law-enforcement contacts. Interventions are strength-based, recovery-oriented, and culturally responsive, delivered in homes, shelters, parks, ER bays, or wherever the crisis occurs.
• • You will co-facilitate weekly debrief meetings with deputies, dispatch, and RHA clinical supervisors to review body-cam footage, refine protocols, and identify training needs. Your feedback directly shapes how the county handles behavioral-health calls and can influence policy at the state level.
• • Data collection is integral: you will enter encounter details into the Co-Responder database, track diversion-from-jail metrics, and compile monthly reports that demonstrate program impact to county commissioners and grant funders. Your statistics will literally prove that treatment works better than incarceration.
• • Schedule flexibility is essential. Shifts may start at 07:00, 15:00, or 23:00 and can include weekends and holidays to match peak call volume. You will receive a county-issued radio, encrypted smartphone, and access to the Sheriff’s CAD system so you can respond from home when on-call.
• • Safety is paramount. You will complete a 40-hour CIT academy, annual defensive-tactics refreshers, and quarterly scenario-based drills with the SWAT medic team. You will also be trained in naloxone administration, blood-borne-pathogen protocols, and scene safety assessment.
• • Professional growth is built-in: RHA funds your continuing-education units, offers free CPR/First Aid, and provides a clear pathway to QMHP, LCAS, or LPC licensure supervision. Many Co-Responders have parlayed this role into leadership positions within RHA or local government crisis systems.
• • At the end of every shift you will know you prevented a suicide, kept a teenager out of juvenile detention, or reunited a veteran with stabilizing services. The impact is immediate, measurable, and deeply human.