ST PAUL, Minn. — Inside the state's largest emergency communications center, navigating even the most basic 911 call can be a challenge.
"So this is like Arden Hills or White Bear Lake area?" said telecommunicator Mary Larson, as she attempted to get a location from a 911 caller on Friday.
Fortunately for Larson when even more time consuming, mental health crisis calls come in, she knows she has a colleague nearby who can help.
"I just had some concerning information that you had maybe some suicidal ideation and I just wanted to check in with you," said Emily Thompson, as she answered a call just a few desks away.
Thompson has worked as an embedded social worker inside the ECC for several years, but she has only been working in the newly redesigned space for a few weeks.
"I am in love with it," she said. "It's really great to be at the center and to be able to have access to everybody."
Larsen couldn't agree more.
"Having the embedded social workers has been a huge help, especially nearby," Larsen said. "Recently, I had a caller who was struggling with a divorce and he didn't want to get involved with assaults and domestics and things like that, but he was trying to communicate with his wife. So we got him over with the embedded social worker and they were able to give them resources for their own therapy and follow up."
Prior to the redesign, that type of call would have tied up both Larsen and Thompson at the same time.
"We would actually go to their console and plug in a headset and try to talk to the person there," Thompson said.
After the redesign, the embedded social workers have their own work space and the ability to dispatch help that goes beyond police and fire.
"When I triage a call and I decide that there needs to be an outreach, I just coordinate with the adult crisis team," Thompson said. "They are able to got out and do a mental health assessment, service offerings and kind of educate on what different services we can offer."
That flexibility comes at a critical time. When the crisis response teams began taking calls in 2016, Ramsey County 911 transferred just 263 calls all year. By last year nearly 3,500 calls were transferred. That volume has increased even more so far this year.
"Since February 14th, we've taken almost 15 hundred calls," Thompson.
Though that's still a fraction of the 380,000 911 calls the ECC handled last year, crisis calls have an outsized impact on time and workload.
"These calls do not have a time limit," Thompson said. "Some of them can be really extensive but some of them just really need that extra time and we are able to provide that for them."
"Sometimes that's all that they need is a listening ear, but 911 dispatchers can't necessarily sit and talk," Nelson said. "But they still need help."
And they're not just a resource for people on the other end of the line. When calls end tragically, having dispatchers and social workers together, means more layers of internal support as well.
"Everybody loves to stop in and say hi and come to us with any questions that they may have," Thompson said.
"So if we have a really bad call and we need to breathe or talk or vent, we have that peer support," Larson said.
The increase in crisis call volume coming into Ramsey County 911 dispatchers doesn't even include the big influx of calls to the new 988 mental health crisis hotline. According to Ramsey County, a separate crisis hotline call center too more than 38,000 thousand calls in 2023.
If you or someone you know is facing a mental health crisis, there is help available from the following resources:
Crisis Text Line – text “MN” to 741741 (standard data and text rates apply)
Crisis Phone Number in your Minnesota county
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, Talk to Someone Now
Throughout Minnesota call **CRISIS (**274747)
The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386
Watch more Breaking The News:
Watch all of the latest stories from Breaking The News in our YouTube playlist:
WATCH MORE ON KARE 11+
Download the free KARE 11+ app for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and other smart TV platforms to watch more from KARE 11 anytime! The KARE 11+ app includes live streams of all of KARE 11's newscasts. You'll also find on-demand replays of newscasts; the latest from KARE 11 Investigates, Breaking the News and the Land of 10,000 Stories; exclusive programs like Verify and HeartThreads; and Minnesota sports talk from our partners at Locked On Minnesota.
- Add KARE 11+ on Roku here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Roku Channel Store.
- Add KARE 11+ on Fire TV here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Amazon App Store.
- Learn more about the KARE 11+ app for Apple TV in the Apple App Store.
- Learn more about KARE 11+ here.