The staff who handle 911 calls throughout St. Paul and Ramsey County returned to their remodeled center this week, with embedded social workers now stationed in the middle of the room.

Some mental health-related calls were already being transferred to people with expertise in the field, but their new spot in the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center (known as the ECC), will allow them to communicate more easily with all staff, officials said.

The ECC opened in 2007 and the center has had some updates since then, though not as extensive a makeover as the latest project, which was budgeted at $1.8 million and just completed. Since people work there 24-7, 365 days a year, the center has seen a lot of wear and tear, said Nancie Pass, Ramsey County Emergency Communications director.

“Some of the consoles were actually breaking down, and we couldn’t find parts for them anymore,” Pass said.

The changes also take into account how the work at the ECC happens. Work stations were rearranged to allow for better communication — for example, the law enforcement dispatchers used to sit in a row and now they’re arranged in a circle “so they’re able to communicate better with each other and not over the desks like they used to have to do,” Pass said.

Public Safety dispatcher Sasha Quandt, front, keeps an eye on police traffic in the remodeled Ramsey County Emergency Communication Center in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Looking at non-traditional responses to 911 calls

Ramsey County formally started its Appropriate Responses Initiative in 2022, which is looking at 911 calls “and how we could create different and new responses to be able to more appropriately meet the needs of people who are calling,” said Jenn Hamrick, the county’s integrated health and justice administrator.

“It’s really being able to think about how we can respond to people having a mental health crisis and 911 callers differently,” beyond a traditional police, fire or emergency medical services response, Hamrick said.

The process of transferring some calls to Ramsey County Crisis began in 2016, though the mental health professionals weren’t located in the ECC at that time. When the embedded social workers were added to the ECC, they were tucked into a corner where space was available. With their new location in the center of the room, they’ll be able to better collaborate with 911 calltakers and dispatchers, Pass said.

“It’s almost a symbolism that happened in an unplanned way — we centered community wellness by centering mental health in the Emergency Communications Center,” said Jessica Kisling, Ramsey County Crisis Services manager.

Four embedded social workers have been assigned to the Ramsey County ECC since 2022.

When there’s a 911 or non-emergency call to the center that is mental-health or substance-use related, those calls are transferred to an embedded social worker if it isn’t a criminal matter or someone who needs immediate medical care.

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“Their role really is to triage and make some decisions about the best response type,” said Ashley Sporer, embedded social work supervisor. They’ve found that the primary need is information about resources, which the social workers can provide during the phone call.

The people calling have a variety of needs. Some are well-known to the social workers, and call multiple times a day or an hour. “They don’t feel like they have anywhere else to call, so we talk to them over the phone and provide them with therapeutic resources and try to connect them with the resources they already have,” Sporer said.

Another example is a parent calling about their adult child who has a mental health condition, isn’t taking their prescription medication or going to appointments. They ask, “Could somebody please go out and knock on his door and see if they can engage him in a different way?” which is a situation in which they’d dispatch Ramsey County Crisis, who are mental health professionals and practitioners, to help in person, Sporer said.

Public Health responders

Public Safety dispatcher Jessica Schendel monitors parts of St. Paul at the remodeled Ramsey County Emergency Communication Center, which handles 911 calls throughout St. Paul and Ramsey County. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

In a pilot program started in February, there are now three St. Paul-Ramsey County Public Health responders who can be dispatched by the ECC to calls involving substance use — that aren’t overdoses or medical emergencies — in New Brighton, Mounds View and Maplewood; they’re due to start in Shoreview on Monday and the county is working with other cities to expand their work.

Examples of types of calls they might respond to are people seeking detoxification services for themselves or others or people looking for help for a loved one with a substance use problem and they “don’t know what else to do or where to call,” Sporer said.

Since mental health and substance use can be intertwined, the embedded social workers can also dispatch a Public Health responder to “meet people where they are and provide them with the resources they need,” Hamrick said.

The ECC received 380,204 calls to 911 last year and 362,926 calls to non-emergency numbers.

Between January 2023 and the end of March 2024, just under 3,000 of the calls were transferred to one of the embedded social workers or to Ramsey County Crisis to work directly with the caller. The number is increasing: this year alone, more than 1,000 calls have been transferred to a social worker to handle.

Sporer attributes the increase to having enough embedded social workers on board to consistently be available for calls and to building trust and relationships with telecommunicators so they feel comfortable transferring calls to them.

Ramsey County is also in the process of looking for a community organization to run a community responder program, which will be another option to dispatch, and the goal is to have a pilot program running by the end of the year, Hamrick said.

17 years since center opened

Ramsey County Emergency Communications shift supervisor Lisa Cardinal at her desk in the remodeled Ramsey County Emergency Communication Center. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

When the Ramsey County ECC opened 17 years ago, it merged 911 centers that had been at the historic Public Safety Building in downtown St. Paul, in Maplewood and in Shoreview. Since then, White Bear Lake has also come on board and the Ramsey County ECC now sends information to Allina Health EMS for ambulance responses and dispatches for the Minnesota State Fair when it’s underway. The ECC is responsible for 20 police and fire agencies.

The center is still a two-stage operation: Telecommunicators answer all 911 and non-emergency calls and electronically transmit information in real time to dispatchers who send police, fire or EMS responders to the call.

The remodel began in January, and all 911 calls and dispatching was handled from the county’s back-up 911 center in Arden Hills. They started moving back to their St. Paul center on Tuesday and plan to wrap up the move on Friday.

With so many people taking calls and dispatching, the center can get noisy. And with ECC staffers working 12-hour shifts, there’s a need for “calming factors” in their workspace, including lighting and minimizing the noise, Pass said.

The remodeled walls have acoustic panels and the colors are a cascading effect. The new ceiling tiles are designed to absorb 90 percent of the noise, Pass said. The carpet was torn out and now there’s soundproof, hard-surfaced rubber flooring that’s easier to clean.

The decisions about flooring, workstations and color schemes were made by employees in surveys, Pass said.

If you need to call 911 anywhere in Minnesota

Tips from the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Emergency Communication Networks division:

Unless you’re deaf, hard of hearing, speech impaired, or in specific emergencies, calling 911 should always be your first option (an easy way to remember this is “Call if you can, text if you can’t”).
Callers should be prepared to give nearby intersections and specific landmarks if they don’t know the exact address, even if calling from a cell phone.
People are asked to stay on the line until they’ve answered all the 911 public safety telecommunicator’s questions.
Anyone using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) devices should ensure their service provider has an accurate physical address, so an emergency call is directed to the right public safety answering point location.

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