That is specifically what the city paid for mental health services.

The health plan provides access to providers.

There's in network providers that are accessed if they want to see someone in person.

It's generally $25 a visit.

There's also virtual visits available through MD Live that are free of charge to the employee.

And then there's of course inpatient care that's covered between 75 and 85%, depending on which plan on which the employees enrolled.

So, so for example, the Betty Ford Foundation, and so if an employee needs um inpatient mental health services, that's another option that's available to them, and this program is generally available at no cost to the employee.

And then finally, um, and the manager spoke about the vision of uh Chief Wright and Chief Elliott was to have an on-staff clinician.

And so in the fall of 2024, the employee clinical wellness program was established.

We hired the first licensed clinician in the fall, and then last summer we hired a second clinician that's part-time, works 30 hours a week, and their services are free to our employees, and they are public safety leaning but but accessible by all employees, um, and those individuals provide counseling, they will uh meet with staff if there's a critical incident, such as like a death of an employee, um, they work with our peer support group for our public safety, um, and they're they're just an employee resource that was an add on about a year and a half ago.

Our peer support team, it's a department resource.

Our peer support team was established back in 1993, and it was a result of an officer-involved shooting that we formed the team.

Uh, the team is made up of both sworn and non-sworn employees of the police department that's specifically trained to obviously do peer support, but also to uh do individual and group debriefings, and they uh also are uh our frontline people as far as making referrals to uh other mental health services.

And we currently have 19 members, which include two of our chaplains, and since the beginning of this year, just to let you know how many contacts we've had, we've had 271 peer contacts from uh those on our department.

So the information we prepared to share with you tonight is on uh the company called Ally Connect.

Ally Connect is an online application that we researched which would provide our employees private access to real-time peer support, licensed therapists, and self-help tools to help them cope with the daily stressors that are associated with police work.

This application can be accessed from an employee's cell phone, from their laptop in the car, or from the computer in their office, and is accessible 24 hours a day.

So several of the following slides are going to contain information that we obtained from Ally Connect that will explain the application in greater detail and highlight the wellness programs and services for first responders.

The company was founded in 2022 by a licensed therapist with extensive experience in military and first responder mental health.

The company currently serves more than 50 agencies across eight states and provides a comprehensive wellness platform designed specifically for first responders.

The purpose of the application is to help tackle one of the biggest challenges we currently face in the law enforcement profession, and that's officer mental health and wellness.

It's designed to support the worthwhile goal of having every first responder in their career as healthy as they started it.

So the company reports a user rate of 16 times higher than traditional employee assistance plans.

They also report an 88% success rate in matching employees with the right therapist, which has resulted in two and a half times longer treatment adherence rate in the long term.

The application will help our officers get assistance faster by matching them with vetted therapists within 24 hours, and the company defines their vetted therapists as culturally competent, meaning they're well versed in the culture demands and experiences specific to law enforcement.

The application includes things such as peer support management, which will create and track internal peer connections and also utilize department data to identify trends, which I'll touch on a little more in the following slide.

So AI-powered technology matches members a digital resource centerapists in minutes and provides access to self-service wellness resources, which is customizable to our specific department as well as putting them in contact with our clinicians here in the city.

So if officers were just wanting to access these resources while they're on duty, maybe they just left a stressful call.

They'd be able to go to the app, it'll be a customizable menu to pick from.

If I'm thinking about stress or anxiety or whatever it is, I might have just cleared from.

Whatever concern they might have, they can access real time on their phone or from their computer.

And it also offers wellness check-ins through its predictive capabilities.

So this will allow us to provide intervention before there's a crisis and build wellness programs based on our officer's specific needs to identify issues early and create plans proactively.

It offers 24-7 clinical support, which can provide guidance to critical incidents real time.

So if we're on some very stressful scene and somebody's maybe having an issue at the moment that with the 24-7 access, we can provide guidance real time.

It also supports our peer support team and Michelle Martin, our city's clinical wellness coordinator, with their decision making and communications, as well as helping us support a post-incident response and department-wide wellness planning.

The company's found that 30% of officers have one or more unaddressed mental wellness conditions that, if left unaddressed, may turn into crisis.

Now, this could be something as simple as just fatigue building up from working the midnight shift, and we rotate shifts every four months.

You go from days to evenings to midnights.

So that will build fatigue, which can lead to stress.

So it isn't always life-threatening critical issues that they're faced with, but just the stressors of the job itself, not only the calls for service that have cumulative stress, but just the rigors of the job and the shift work.

But one of the most attractive features of this application is its ability to integrate with our CAD system, our computer-aided dispatch system.

So what this will do is identify personnel who may be experiencing cumulative stress or exposure to critical incidents that might negatively affect their employee wellness.

So for example, our shifts rotate every four months.

You will likely go from days to four months, evenings to four months, midnights to four months.

So you may have different supervisors in each one of those shifts.

So I may know that Tracy went to a drowning of a child during the day shift.

Now he goes to evening shift, different sergeant.

He then goes to mass shooting or hanging or some horrible event.

And if as you change shifts and chase change sergeants, you may fall through the cracks.

But what this application is designed to do is be fed through our CAD system to know what officers went to what calls, and then be able to predict, hey, this person may need some attention, just a wellness check-in, whether it's with Michelle and her team or our peer support team to just make sure you know they're still on track, everything's okay, that these uh, you know, stressful calls aren't building up on them.

But by identifying those concerns early and providing proactive resources, the tool has the potential to reduce poor field decisions by officers, lower community complaints, decrease our use of force incidents, reduce risk to fellow officers, lower PTSD related disability claims, prevent uh prevent domestic violence and uh most importantly prevent suicides.

So after consultation with the city's purchasing department and the city attorney's office, we began a trial of the product on March 26 of this year, and although the trial didn't include the CAD integration, which is very important, the participation and engagement levels have already demonstrated significant value.

The pilot was only offered to our sworn officers and dispatch personnel, which total about 400 personnel, give or take.

And out of that, 216 voluntary participants engaged with the program, and we've had over 363 completed wellness check-ins.

So you may ask how come only 216 people participated, but you had 363 wellness check-ins.

You can just keep revisiting the site, accessing resources, answering the questions differently, like are you not sleeping well because you're on midnights?

Yes.

Well, now you're on days.

Okay, I'll change my answer to that question.

But the data we have so far has been very promising.

And another benefit is its ability to support the existing city wellness resources.

So our city clinicians can be prioritized within the application and customize it again to our needs and steer our officers in the right direction.

So this program would be complementary to the existing services, and again, not intended to be a replacement for those services.

But from the uh information we got so far from the wellness check-ins, we've shared that information with Michelle, our clinical wellness coordinator, and she's working on some wellness materials now for us to share with our employees based on the data we have so far.

And it could be things as simple as you know, sleep deprivation, I'm not sleeping well, just a host of issues.

But we armed Michelle with that information, and she's gonna now use that to roll resources out to the troops.

So the financial investment, bottom line here for the police department, it would total 98,000 in change for the first year, and that would include the CAD integration.

The company would send boots on the ground here, make sure our CAD system speaks to their system as well as do some train the trainer events so that we're able to uh roll the application out more thoroughly, and then that would be followed by 83,000 a year over the next four years.

So if we were to expand the program to include all the public safety departments, police, fire, and sheriff, that would require an initial investment of about 199,000 for the first year, and that would be followed by 172,000 for the following four years to cover all three departments.

So that comes out to about fifty-seven thousand per department annually for the four outlying years versus the uh eighty-three thousand if the police department was going alone.

I have to apologize, there's a typo on the slide uh that mentions 85,000 for the outlying four years.

It's actually 83,000 in change.

I apologize for that typo.

So, next steps.

We would recommend proceeding with year one with the police department, and then work with the fire department and sheriff's office to determine feasibility of expansion.

But conversations I've had with the fire chief and sheriff staff, they're interested in uh exploring expansion to those two departments as well, and then determine the best way to integrate this service with our existing mental health resources that the city offers and Michelle and her team, and lastly, determine the applicability for other first responders in the city, such as human services or CIBH workers that may have to go out in the field and deal with critical incidents as well.

So, with that said, we are here for any questions you might have about it.

Anyone?

Uh Mr.

Jeffers.

Yes, sir.

Uh Chief Seleski, has there been any feedback from Ally Connect as it relates to uh the participation rate we've seen in the beginning here, contrasted with other agencies of similar sizes?

Trace, you had that?

Yes, sir.

Our uh rate is approximately four times the amount of some of the other agencies.

So anecdotally at this point, it appears this would be uh a tool that's made specifically and appropriately for our needs.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, to the chief, I don't know, maybe for the appropriate person or the manager.

You inter you mentioned that we're not using the CAD integration right now.

Is that because that's an additional cost, or is that because we wanted to try the program at its base level and then see if we wanted to roll it out?

And is that if so, do we need to pay additional for the recommendation that's requested to utilize the CAD integration?

Yes, ma'am.

So the trial that we're uh undertaken since March has been a free trial.

So for the CAD integration, they'd have to fly people in and uh not only do some training on our end, but make sure the two systems can speak that our CAD system can be fed into this application, which I imagine would require some expense on their part.

So we just decided to proceed free trial to see if it was worth exploring further.

So the recommendation that's presented to council for the cost, does that include the CAD integration?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, excellent.

And then just a question regarding the predictive capabilities.

You mentioned that it can alert to somebody in the department, like our wellness coordinator, who can then either I guess address the person directly or have a peer support person maybe address that person.

Does it also alert to that person as well?

For instance, like if you've gone on all these calls, I know first responders, you often don't realize that maybe you are experiencing trauma.

Will it alert that person too?

Like a check-in, like, hey, you may be at a stressful day today.

Do you want to talk?

Or is it just alert to the wellness coordinator?

If you know, it does alert to the person as well as the uh coordinator.

It usually goes to the person first and peer support, and then it it generates kind of a referral to the uh wellness coordinator.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you.

Mr.

Smith.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh yes, Chief.

In reference to the program, what is what is your timeline of wanting to start?

And then, secondly, is um getting the sheriff and the fire department involved.

How quickly can they get up the speech so everyone can start at the same time?

Can you give me any feedback on that?

We ideally we would like to start the police department July 1st.

Uh, now as far as getting the police uh the fire department and sheriff's office on board.

Uh once we get a commitment from them that yes, they'd like to be on board, we'll help facilitate the discussion with the company to see okay, you know, now what's it gonna take to get all three on board?

So CAD would also feed fire calls as well, and what fire personnel went to tragic calls, and then with the sheriff's office from our discussions with them, although if they make it a call at the jail for a death in the jail, uh that it wouldn't necessarily be in CAD that deputy so-and-so responded to the call.

So, but they would be able to feed the system with their databases so that it would be deputy specific who handled this tragic call inside the jail.

But we would certainly work with the company between myself, the fire chief, and the sheriff to facilitate getting everybody on board.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

Dr.

King.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

I just have a question about the credentials for the therapist, and you have a part-time and a full-time licensed professional counselor.

Is that to the exclusion of psychiatrists and licensed clinical social workers and psychologists?

Is it restricted to professional counselors?

The two employees we hired are licensed professional counselors.

We were looking to hire either a licensed clinical social worker or a licensed professional counselor, but they can triage with other professionals as needed, um, and they can also coordinate with the this application and with the EAP.

So there's that they have access to other providers if the level of care needs to be provided by a different level of professional.

Mr.

Bud.

Thank you, Mayor West.

Um, thank you for your presentations.

This is outstanding.

Um, just a statement, I fully support investing in our employees.

I think this is a great opportunity to show our employees that we care and that we want we take mental health very serious.

What would be the step if we wanted to go forward with this?

We do a vote or what what was the next step, Mr.

Manager?

So uh, based on the conversation we had with council a few weeks ago, um, it was more it was less about are we going to do the program?

We are going to do the program.

It was more about the source of funding.

So if you remember, Council Member News talked about the um asset forfeiture funds and and other potential uses there.

And during that conversation, we we weren't at that point where we knew where the beta tests would end up.

Is this the product we would use?

Would we look at other products?

We're pretty confident at this point in the tool.

So on June 23rd, you'll have your budget technical corrections and your final amendments.

So we do these every year, the stuff we didn't know during the last quarter, usually we have state changes, we're not gonna have those, so unfortunately, we'll have to come back in July just as an aside.

But on June 23rd, one of those items will be a funding plan for Ally Connect that doesn't rely on the asset forfeiture money.

So you'll see um some savings we identified and some wellness um funds that we have available to us, and that's for the police department to to council member Smith's question.

We are very interested in taking a look at whether it's with another beta test with fire and sheriff, or you know, if that's the right tool, there might be other tools.

There's some economies of scale to using the same tool, but if it's not the right tool for their business lines, you know, we need to know that as well.

But it is a high priority for us, and so um we'll continue to report back on council on what we find there and then how we intend to move forward on a sort of an all-in strategy.

Ms.

Newell?

Um I just wanted to ask to the funding point.

Um, and I wanted to also thank Council Member Bund for bringing this up a couple times about getting this funded and getting this done.

So I thank you for bringing this up so we can have this presentation today.

Um, but to the manager, the funding that we've identified that is not forfeiture money, is that out of existing uh money in the police department's budget, or will that be supplanted from the general fund or outside money?

It is a combination.

So we my recollection is we have some wellness money that's a primary source for for things like this.

It's a it's a wellness tool.

Um we have some savings.

And do you remember we had the line item for unknown impacts of state legislation?

And so we chose not to do some of the things that we thought we that that and some of the things aren't required this year, and we chose not to do others.

So we have some savings identified there.

We sort of had a holding line item.

So you'll see on the 23rd a variety of of items are are being funded by releasing that reserve.

And then I believe the police department had some funds um identified for the city to purchase some software that they have since received a grant to purchase that software.

So instead of releasing those funds back to the general fund, we recommend using those funds for this application.

I just want to make sure that the police department's not having to kind of pick and choose between one or the other, and that this is something that is made a priority with our funding.

So I appreciate that we're not having to cut additional services with the police department to get this necessary service back in place.

Thank you, Ms.

Redder.

Thank you.

Um just a couple of little technical questions.

On the police department data page, it talks about prioritizing city clinicians through the app.

Can you tell uh they will not be available to other subscribers?

Is that correct?

That's correct, ma'am.

It wouldn't be shared on Ally Connect's uh global platform.

When our users would click on the app, it would be customizable to us.

So as I understand it, if we were to list Michelle as the number one contact, uh it would only be available to Chesapeake employees that had the app police fire sheriff, whoever, but not to somebody from Virginia Beach or elsewhere.

Okay, and is the CAD feature an opt-in, or is it department wide?

Do you know?

That's going to be department wide, so it will be fed by CAD to let the app know and keep us abreast of who went to what calls uh that were critical in nature and might you know bring on some stress later.

The Walmart shooting other things that were tragic that you know you may lose track of who all went to the call, but this the CAD will track it, send it to the app so that no one falls through the cracks, and again perhaps falling through the cracks because Sergeant Branch knows I went to this call, and Sergeant Myers, four months from now knows I went to another call, but the two of them don't know that I went to these two calls, so this would help track the cumulative effects of some of these tragic calls.

And how is that?

Um I not I I'd hate to use this word, but I can't think of a better one right now.

How's that actually triggered?

Is someone gonna track the calls and uh I'm sorry, I see you back there, but I'm not sure what uh what that means.

As I understand it, ma'am, the the app will track the calls.

So CAD will let the app know that there was a uh multiple homicide of multiple people killed, let's say, and CAD will feed the app to say Officer Seleski, Officer Branch, Officer Koontz, Officer Myers went to this call.

So now that's excuse me.

Logged in the app, and then if a month from now there's another tragic call, a drowning, what have you, and say, well, out of those four people, Officer Branch is now went to the second tragic call.

So now the alerts will start.

However, we program it to say X many traumatic calls.

We want to know so that we can at least do the reach out and do the wellness check in.

Okay, so that would be up to you all to determine that someone from the department, as opposed to a counselor would make that connection.

Yes, ma'am.

So it would the app would, as I understand it, jump in where I'm wrong.

Sorry, it you promoted him right from sergeant right up to the deputy chief.

So uh the information would be fed into the app and the uh company officials who are clinicians themselves, who would then notify like Tracy said the officer would get notified.

Hey, you've been to some stressful stuff, you want to check in, but it would also notify the command staff and the peer support team that this particular officer may need a wellness check in based on these calls that uh he's been to as of late.

Yeah, the uh the program is is it's sort of uh customizable as well.

It has that AI feature that will list what we would all agree are um critical calls, whether it's uh you know suicide, uh death of a child, uh accident with injuries.

So it would already flag those types of calls.

So the AI feature would track which officers went to those calls, and then if an officer goes to, let's say three is the triggering amount of calls, then it will start sending the alerts.

And that would be up to the department to make that decision how many calls trigger it.

We will work with them, but we we I think they already have numbers in mind based on the other departments they've already serviced.

So we haven't we haven't broken down how many calls were serviced, but we would be able to have uh input into how many calls.

Okay, that sounds like a great feature.

Thank you.

Um I would just say I'm kind of right along with Mr.

Bunn.

And I hope we will leave capacity I'm I'd love to see them be able to start.

I because you're ready to go, right?

Yes, ma'am.

It's pulling doing a switch.

Yes, ma'am.

Um that we reserve capacity, should the other departments or are you able to do that?

Okay, um, let's lock them into the price so it doesn't escalate.

But this seems like a a really good tool for you all, and um so I I hope it helps.

Thank you.

Mr.

Manager, thank you so much for bringing this back to us and getting clarity.

I think we're all on the same page.

We sort of do appreciate it.

Appreciate you all for being here tonight.

Our regular council meeting will begin at 6 30.

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