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Want the full model?
Community Care
A hands-on path for small departments ready to embed social workers and build a sustainable co-response program from the ground up.
Stronger Communities.
Better Outcomes.
In a small town, the officer answering a mental health call is often the only help available. We help departments put trained social workers beside them.
We give law enforcement agencies a guided path to building co-response programs that work.
A proven model, practical tools, workforce connections, and implementation support. Built for small and mid-sized departments.
Community Care Model
A proven co-responder model, built for small and rural agencies.
Training & Tools
In-person academy, online courses, and the templates to start.
Workforce Pipeline
Growing the next generation of police social workers.
Measurable Impact
Fewer bookings, fewer ER visits, more officer time on patrol.
As seen on
PBS North Carolina · ncIMPACT
What co-response looks like in the field.
When Sylva Police Chief Chris Hatton first heard the idea of sending social work interns alongside officers, he was skeptical. Then he saw one in action.
Watch the segment“I got to see firsthand some of the best police work I’ve ever seen done by an intern, a social work intern.”
What changed his mind was seeing the gap firsthand: when mental illness was driving the call, his officers had few options beyond jail.
“We have jail. That’s what we’re given to handle problems.”
The Community Care model gave officers another option: a social worker who could help in the moment, follow up after the crisis, and connect people to services that police alone could not provide.
Today, Hatton says having a social worker is non-negotiable:
“I wouldn’t want to do this job, not without one.”
It started with one intern.
Our flagship program, Community Care, began with a single social work intern. There was no program, no budget, and no playbook — just the conviction that an officer answering a behavioral health call shouldn't have to answer it alone.
Since 2021 we've worked with eight law enforcement agencies across the state — and six of them have made the role permanent, four funding the position out of their own budget and two securing grant funding to create it. For a rural department, that is not a line item added lightly.
Now CoResponse Collaborative's mission is to scale and expand the program and trainings beyond Western North Carolina.
Law enforcement has a name for it — frequent flyers. The twenty or so people a department spends eighty percent of its time responding to, none of it for anything a badge can fix. Community Care breaks that cycle by connecting those people to the help that actually works.
We have never recruited an agency. Every one of them came to us.
Community Care sites are concentrated in Western North Carolina — the small and rural departments the model was built for.
- Piloted with the Sylva Police Department
- Expanding to new sites with NC Health and Human Services
- The only program in NC teaching a police social work course
- Built for rural communities, scalable nationwide
One intern in one small department became a model that other agencies asked for by name.
- Law enforcement agencies
- run the Community Care model today, embedding a social worker alongside their officers.
- Made the role permanent
- Four fund the social worker out of their own budget; two secured grant funding to create a full-time position.
- Interns placed
- Social work students placed in partner agencies, building the workforce the model depends on.
- Agencies we went looking for
- We have never pitched a department. Every one of them came to us.
One small department proved what's possible. Now others need a path to get there.
What took years to build in Western North Carolina shouldn't have to be reinvented by every small department in America.
- 90%+
- of North Carolina law enforcement agencies employ fewer than 50 sworn officers
- 516
- state and local law enforcement agencies in North Carolina
- 18,000
- state and local agencies nationwide
The agencies with the greatest need have had the fewest tools built for them.
Start where you are. Build what you need.
Some departments are starting from scratch. Others already have training, staff, partnerships, or policies in place. CoResponse Collaborative is designed to fill the gaps, not make agencies start over.
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Need to prepare your team?
Training & Tools
Train officers and social workers, and access the policies, protocols, templates, and practical resources needed to do the work well.
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Need the right people?
Workforce Pipeline
Connect with a growing pipeline of students and trained police social workers prepared for this specialized work.
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Need to show what’s working?
Measurable Impact
Track calls, services, outcomes, and program impact with tools designed around the realities of co-response.
Use what you need. Build on what you already have.
Field-tested since 2021. Being built into one platform.
The CoResponse Collaborative platform gives small departments the training, policies, tools, and support to build a co-response program without starting from scratch.
We're turning years of training, policies, tools, and implementation knowledge into a digital platform.
From “we want a co-response program”to ready to launch.
A guided path. Every step. Built for small agencies.
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Assess
Are we ready?
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Plan
What do we need to build?
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Prepare
How should our program operate?
- 4
Train
Is our team ready?
- 5
Launch
Are all the pieces in place?
- 6
Measure
Is it working?
The platform we're building.
Purpose-built tools for every stage of implementation.
Agency ReadinessHendersonville PD
Your agency is
62% ready to launch
Readiness checklist
- Leadership commitment
- Community partners identified
- Behavioral health staffing
- Referral protocol
- Memorandum of understanding
Recommended next step
Establish behavioral health partnership
Assess Readiness
See what's missing and what comes next.
Implementation RoadmapHendersonville PD
Community Care Implementation
Phase 3 of 6 · Build Your Program
Assess Readiness
Plan Your Program
Build Policies & Protocols
Train Your Team
Launch Your Program
Measure & Improve
Implementation Roadmap
Follow a proven path from planning to launch.
Policy BuilderDraft
Crisis Response Protocol
OverviewSectionsPreview
- Roles & responsibilities
- Eligibility & response criteria
- Dispatch & notification
- Transportation protocol
- Hospital handoff procedure
- Data sharing agreement
3 items remaining before this policy is launch-ready
Policies & Tools
Customize field-tested policies and protocols.
Outcomes DashboardSample month
- 48Crisis contacts
- 31Connected to services
- 9Diverted from ER
- 7Diverted from jail
- 126Officer hours returned
Contacts over time
Outcomes That Matter
Track impact and report results.
Cloud BasedData SecureAccessible on Any Device
Training tells you what to do. We're building the how.
Most co-response training ends when the class does. Agencies still have to figure out staffing, policies, partnerships, referrals, data, and day-to-day operations.
That's the gap CoResponse Collaborative is built to close.
What agencies have today
Training alone
Send officers to a multi-day training
Return to the department
Write policies from scratch
Navigate partnerships alone
Invent workflows and referral paths
Guess at what to measure
Build, or rebuild, as you go
What we're building
The CoResponse Collaborative platform
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Assess readiness
- 2
Plan with a proven roadmap
- 3
Prepare policies and partnerships
- 4
Train the whole team
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Launch with support in place
Measure what actually changed
A department of twelve officers should be able to run the same quality of program as a department of twelve hundred.
We measure what matters.
Co-response only earns its place if it changes outcomes. Early implementation data from Community Care partner agencies, alongside evidence from comparable national programs, shows reductions in jail utilization, hospital use, and repeat crisis contacts. These are the measures we track at every site.
Fewer jail bookings
People in crisis routed toward services instead of custody, when custody was never the right answer.
Fewer emergency room visits
Care connected earlier, before a hard night becomes an ambulance ride.
Connections that hold
Warm handoffs into housing, treatment, and benefits — tracked through to whether they stuck.
Officer hours returned
Time given back to patrol when a social worker takes the lead on a behavioral health call.
Community trust
Voluntary, strengths-based contact changes how a department is seen by the people it serves.
Evidence for funders
The same measures at every site, so agencies can prove impact and keep their program funded.
Built through strong partnerships.
We are grateful to our partners for helping put co-response into more communities.
Research and commercialization partner
Scenario-based training partner
Supporting statewide expansion
Platform development partner
…and a network of community partners across North Carolina.
Bring co-response to your community.
Whether you're a chief exploring the model, a university partner, or a funder — we'd like to hear from you.