In Sky Valley, embedded social worker is a ‘department of one’

SNOHOMISH — Late on a Wednesday afternoon, Jessi Beyer got a call from a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy: a 15-year-old boy who routinely used fentanyl might benefit from talking to her. But he’d been reported missing earlier in the day.

Beyer, a social worker embedded with first-responders along U.S. 2, drove to the teen’s home in Snohomish later that evening, right behind two patrol cars. She wasn’t sure if the boy would be there or not, but the deputies identified him through the window.

One of the deputies knocked on the door, talked to a family member and asked the boy to come to the driveway. Beyer introduced herself to the boy and asked how everything was going.

“I was trying to figure out, from his perspective, what was going on,” Beyer said. “Why he was using drugs, what his history of drug use was.”

Beyer spoke with the boy and his family for the better part of an hour, and the boy showed Beyer some of his artwork. Eventually, he got in an argument with a family member and ran back into the house.

“Chronic mental health issues and substance use are really complex challenges,” Beyer said. “They often can’t be resolved in just one conversation.”

Beyer, 25, has been on the job two months as the “East County co-responder.” In that time, she has responded to about a dozen people in crises ranging from domestic violence to suicidal ideation.

A dozen is a lot for a new co-responder program, Volunteers of America clinical director Brandon Foister said. A similar program in Whatcom County only got a few calls in its first month, although it now receives around 40 calls a week.

Crisis call volume at the Monroe Police Department also ebbs and flows across the year, Sgt. Derrick Lether said.

Beyer is the first co-responder in Snohomish County. She works from 2 p.m. to 12 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday, alongside several overlapping organizations: the Monroe police, the county sheriff’s office, the Sultan Police Department, Snohomish Regional Fire and Rescue, and several fire districts. She’s employed through Volunteers of America, and she has office space in Sultan and Monroe.

The program is funded through the cities of Sultan and Monroe, as well as federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act, county spokesperson Kelsey Nyland said.

Co-responder programs have become more common in recent years. Over the last three years, the state Legislature has passed several bills funding co-responder training and programs with bipartisan support.

However, many co-responder programs are based in cities, like the Seattle Police Department’s Crisis Response Team.

“Rural communities, as opposed to urban communities, are really fertile ground for programs like this,” Foister said. Rural areas might not have as many mental health resources as a city.

At first, Beyer wasn’t sure if the community and her clients would be open to the program.

“We’re sticking a ‘shrink’ in rural America,” Beyer said. Beyer grew up outside of Banks, Oregon, a town about the size of Gold Bar.

But the Sky Valley community has been welcoming, Beyer said.

Two months before the program’s beginning, Beyer consistently attended dinners and went to briefings with Monroe police.

“They really got to know me,” Beyer said.

Sgt. Lether said it’s “fantastic to have another resource.”

“There were plenty of times in the past when we could have used her — that would have been perfect,” Lether said.

Last year, a woman was going through a mental health crisis, and she was yelling out of her window, creating a “nightmare for the neighbors,” Lether said. Neighbors wanted police to do something, but the woman “wasn’t always a big fan” of the officers, he said.

The woman might have been more willing to have a conversation with Beyer, Lether said.

In college, Beyer worked as an EMT, which gave her some insight into working alongside first responders, she said.

Beyer has her own call sign on the radio: MHP-31. The MHP stands for Mental Health Professional.

Police officers can be great at de-escalation, Foister said. But even with “the best de-escalation skills in the world” a squad car and a police uniform can “create a psychological impact” on people, Foister said.

“Cops and social workers have really different skill sets,” Beyer said.

One time, Beyer and two officers checked on a woman in Monroe who was unable to find shelter for the night. The woman was hunched over on the ground, while the deputies leaned against their car and looked down at her.

“They weren’t doing anything wrong,” Beyer said of the officers. “It’s just not their training.”

Beyer sat next to the woman on the ground.

“Police, and even firefighters — they have a strong body language,” Beyer said.

Beyer said she’d only do her job in partnership with police or other first responders.

“I do not want to be out there without a cop,” she said.

Sometimes her clients have histories of violence. Often, the police will make contact with someone and check out the situation before calling Beyer to the scene.

“I do most of the talking from there,” Beyer said.

The community, too, has been receptive to Beyer’s role, she said. Before she officially started, she looked up community calendars to find events where she could “show face” and build rapport.

At 6 p.m. Wednesday, Beyer ate at a free community dinner hosted by Take The Next Step, a Monroe faith-based nonprofit. A man told her that he’d recently seen a woman in Al Borlin Park, apparently having a mental health crisis. Beyer and Monroe police went looking, but couldn’t find her.

A “traditional” co-responder might only respond to active crises and 911 calls. But Beyer said that proactive outreach is also an important tool for addressing a community’s mental health crises.

Most of the work is about “people skills,” Beyer said.

Many of Beyer’s clients have a history of drug use, and sometimes they’re experiencing psychosis or strong delusions, Beyer said.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Beyer said. “If I can be a person who treats them like a person, it can make all the difference in the world.”

Snohomish County has an array of mental health resources, shelters, hospitals and detox centers, Beyer said. But resources aren’t evenly distributed across the county.

“A lot of the clients that I serve are experiencing some form of homelessness or poverty,” Beyer said.

Sometimes, her clients are in Sultan and don’t have transportation to resources in Everett, she said.

“There’s definitely that motivation to get to the resources,” Beyer said. “The challenge is the ability to get to those resources.”

Right now, Beyer is on the clock four days a week. That’s “a whole lot better than nothing,” but a full week of coverage would be better, Lether said.

Volunteers of America is “pursuing funding” so that more mental health professionals could expand coverage to six or seven days a week in Sky Valley, Foister said.

But until then, Beyer is “essentially a department of one,” she said.

Beyer has a graduate degree in critical psychology and crisis response.

“You’re going to forget everything that you learned on your first client call,” Beyer said. “If you can just be a human with this human, you’re going to be OK.”

Surya Hendry: 425-339-3104; surya.hendry@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @suryahendryy.