Portland Street Response is hiring 18 people to fill five different roles: mental health crisis responders I and II, Peer Support Specialists, Community Health Workers, and Community Health Medics. Portland Street Response is designed to serve as a third branch of the City of Portland’s first responder system: Police, Fire, and Portland Street Response.
The Bureau of Emergency Communications’ (BOEC) role will be to dispatch Police, Fire, or AMR if the call relates to saving a life, reporting a fire, a medical emergency, or reporting a crime. For other non-life-threatening (but crisis-related) scenarios currently responded to by Police and Fire (such as behavioral health issues and welfare checks) Portland Street Response will be dispatched as an unarmed, first responder team, trained in behavioral health and on-scene medical assistance.
A citywide hiring launch means they may handle as many as 18,000 calls every year. The alternate responder program currently sends mental health workers, medics, and other responders to low-acuity, non-emergent calls. For the first time, the medic roles also offer a pathway to becoming a Portland firefighter. Right now, they pull medics from Portland Fire and Rescue.
Furthermore, two primary benefits of creating this new branch of first responders for non-life-threatening but crisis-related calls are: Enables the City of Portland to free up Police and Fire resources to attend to life saving and crime-related calls for help; and Provides quick and compassionate response by trauma informed members trained in crisis management, emergency medicine, and behavioral health. “We’re looking at a March launch with those new teams to be coming out, so that’ll give us a total of six vans to cover citywide,” PSR Director Robyn Burek said.
