By Melissa Frick
mlive.com
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Grand Rapids is retooling its Homeless Outreach Team to offer a 24-hour model that focuses more on medical care, beginning this summer.
Fire Chief Brad Brown said the program, which will be called the Medical Outreach Team (MOT), is still focused on working with homeless individuals across the city. But now, it will offer more proactive medical care that takes a casework approach to helping residents navigate the medical system.
The goal of revamping the program is to be more responsive to the needs of homeless people in the community, and to also draw in more firefighters to the team, which has struggled to find new members, the fire chief said.
Brown presented the changes to the city’s public safety committee on Tuesday, April 29. He said there will be a temporary reduction in the program’s services as it transitions and onboards staff, before it goes live with the expanded model on June 2.
The program, which currently runs 40 hours a week, will shift to operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, Brown said.
The fire department’s Homeless Outreach Team was formed in 2020 to help the city’s homeless population navigate the pandemic through education and sanitization efforts.
It later expanded the scope of its work to include helping people access substance and mental health treatment programs, in partnership with Network 180, Kent County’s community mental health authority and the Grand Rapids Police Department.
Brown said the current focus and staff makeup of the team no longer meets the needs of the community or the fire department.
Currently, the team operates Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. and its responses are largely complaint-driven.
The program’s staffing has been reduced over the years due in part to retirements, Brown said. The police department has also transitioned off the team and now provides a staff liaison and resources instead. Three firefighters on the team are nearing retirement, and the department has struggled to find replacements, Brown said.
“We’ve posted (the job) twice, and out of 232 personnel, not one person wanted to join that team,” Brown told the public safety committee.
At one point, the city considered transitioning the program away from the fire department and potentially offering it through the community development department, where the city’s homelessness coordinator works.
However, city leaders determined that the fire department was the best fit for the team due to its knowledge and experience on the ground.
“We’re well-versed working out in the streets at all hours with anybody that lives, works, plays and resides in our city,” Brown said. “We’re very comfortable working out in the streets. And so, the work is going to stay in the fire department.”
Brown said 24-hour shifts are the norm within the fire department, so he’s hoping the schedule change will draw in more applicants than with the current Monday-through-Friday model.
A social worker will still accompany a fire medical officer to calls during the daytime hours of the shift, offering a casework approach that will help residents get the care they need while also freeing up emergency responses from unnecessary 911 calls, Brown said.
Brown said a proactive medical approach will be more beneficial for many residents, including in one example where the fire department responds to the same resident on the southeast side of the city several times a week for mental health assistance.
“This is where the medical outreach team needs to be involved, not sending the big red truck 3-4 times a week,” Brown said. “They don’t need a fire crew to show up – they need someone to walk alongside them to get the proper resource.”
Another example is a resident who lost their spot at the dialysis center needs to be taken to the hospital by the HOT team for emergency dialysis three times a week, he explained.
“That’s exactly where the medical outreach team can take a casework approach, leave the big red fire truck back at the house, and work this case to fruition and get this person back into the dialysis clinic,” he said.
The fire department responds to roughly 17,000 EMS and rescue calls annually, Brown said.
During Tuesday’s public safety meeting, committee member Jim Davis brought forward concerns about eliminating the word “homeless” from the team’s name. But Brown described the changes as an “enhancement” and reiterated the team would still be focused on helping homeless individuals.
“Homelessness is still at the core of the work,” he said. “We’re folding in the medical. We run on so many people experiencing homelessness that have medical issues. This was a natural fit to take that one step further and help them navigate the health system.”
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