CAMPBELL COUNTY, Ky. — Police social worker roles are expanding across Northern Kentucky, and Campbell County is now partnering with its cities to provide the service.
The county contacted its cities to gauge interest in reimbursing them to provide the service on their behalf. This idea is similar to what the counties offer their cities through occupational tax collection, planning and zoning, animal control, etc.
The fiscal court voted at its meeting on Dec. 4 to approve the interlocal agreement.
Bellevue and Dayton are the two cities currently interested in working with the county. They intend to share the social worker who will operate under the Campbell County Police Department. Both of their city councils have already approved the interlocal agreement.
Per the agreement, the social worker will take on the following responsibilities:
- Provide outreach, engagement, behavioral health and social service connections to individuals who may experience repeated run-ins with law enforcement for certain repeated offenses.
- Collaborate with cities and agencies to establish a referral process for individuals.
- Provide behavioral health and social service training to law enforcement officers.
- Develop screening procedures to help those in need of behavioral health and social service resources.
- Enhance the network of partnering agencies, which includes St. Elizabeth Healthcare, NKY Health, Northern Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, Campbell County Detention Center, etc.
"The thing I like is everybody working together," Bellevue Mayor Charlie Cleves said. "We were just glad that we can all work together to achieve something really good."
Bellevue and Dayton will reimburse the county $100,000 (total) a year for the position.
Cleves said since the two cities are sharing the worker 50–50, they will also split the cost.
"The people who have the most drug problems will get benefit (from) it, because they're the ones coming in (who) need this type of person on your police force," Cleves said.
“It appears as this method of delivering certain services is sort of sweeping Northern Kentucky,” Campbell County Judge/Executive Steve Pendery said. “Across Northern Kentucky, there is a pretty substantial commitment to this.”
Campbell County Administrator Matt Elberfeld said the interlocal agreement is structured so that should other cities want to come on board as the program grows, it would be easy to add them.
The county approved moving one of its current police social workers, Laura Wilson, into a supervisor position to oversee the program and then plans to hire an additional person to backfill her open spot. Therefore, the county will have four positions: one supervisor and three police social workers.
The current social workers serve the primary police jurisdiction, which is unincorporated Campbell County, Silver Grove, and some smaller cities without police departments, such as Melbourne, California, Crestview and Mentor.
Elberfeld said any additional costs to the fiscal court will be paid for using opioid settlement funds. Kentucky will receive $478 million as its share of two national settlement agreements. The agreements require manufacturers and distributors who flooded the states with opioids to settle 4,000 claims by state and local governments that they created and fueled the opioid epidemic.
There is no additional general fund spending related to this.
“With it being a permitted use of the opioid settlement money, I think you’ll see this growing across all three counties; at least, they’re all in similar discussions,” Elberfeld said. “There could be more cities in the future that join onto this, and we can easily update the interlocal agreement.”
Campbell County Police Chief Craig Sorrell said the goal of using social workers is to limit the number of calls police officers have to respond to situations far outside their training. He said it is like calling an electrician, and a plumber shows up.
"I would say the benchmark is that we start being able to take care of some of the people that really don't require a policeman," Cleves said.
Sorrell said the department recently received multiple calls about a man living in his car in the low temperatures, an example of a situation that better fits a police social worker than a police officer.
“Their role (officers) is more enforcement,” Sorrell said. “They want to help, but having that expertise that social workers provide, the knowledge, they have, the connections and the capabilities, will reduce who knows how many calls over the course of the next coming months.”
Sorrell said there is a misconception that the department lets the police social worker take calls that police officers should be answering. He said that never happens, and the department doesn’t want the social worker responding to a call without being accompanied by an officer.
“Not only are the officers being freed up to do what their expertise is, It’s connecting people in need with services that the social workers have, a network of services they can draw on to get help whatever that might be,” Campbell County Commissioner Geoff Besecker said.
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