Philly mobile crisis response teams average 20 mental health emergencies a day. Advocates call for expansion

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Mental health experts and advocates say Philadelphia’s Community Mobile Crisis Response Teams network has become critical in addressing behavioral health emergencies across the city, but stressed that the program needs to expand in order to meet rising demand.

Health providers and leaders at the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services are asking the city to invest more money into the program to scale up technology, staffing and training protocols.

The community mobile crisis response teams include clinicians, nurses, social workers and other outreach specialists who respond 24/7 to local calls that come in through the national 988 suicide and crisis lifeline. Providers say these teams play a critical role in supporting residents during difficult and potentially volatile situations.

“When people don’t have this kind of response, they suffer,” said Julia Lyon, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Center City.

Crisis teams were dispatched to more than 14,000 calls between January 2023 and January 2025, city officials said.

It is a separate network from Philadelphia’s Crisis Intervention Response Team program, which pairs police officers and civilian mental health workers on behavioral health calls that come in through 911.

Lyon, who testified at a City Council committee public hearing Monday, said the city should prioritize funding for community response models over programs that involve police.

“On countless occasions, I have seen my clients become endangered by the wrong response arriving on scene,” she said. “And conversely, I have seen how connection, support and therapeutic intervention can change the course of someone’s life or even save it.”

The community mobile crisis response network was piloted in 2021 following the death of Walter Wallace Jr., who was shot and killed by city police officers in 2020 outside his home in West Philadelphia after a family member called 911 for help, as he was in crisis.

Crisis providers cover different sections of Philadelphia and contract with the city through four nonprofit behavioral health organizations: PATH, Elwyn, the John F. Kennedy Behavioral Health Center and the Consortium.

While teams are responding faster to calls — arriving on average within 50 minutes — Kehinde Solanke, senior director of operations at DBHIDS, said a funding boost could help put additional teams on the ground during high-volume times to improve response times. “Thirty minutes is a dream,” she said.

But Solanke said provider organizations and the program continue to suffer from staffing shortages and burnout.

“It’s really difficult to get people to do this job, especially when we’re looking for master’s [degree]-level clinicians to be crisis response specialists and we pay them barely minimum wage,” she said.

DBHIDS is requesting nearly $21,500,000 in the next city fiscal year budget for behavioral health programming and services, some of which would be used to expand mobile response teams and launch a new “traffic control” technology platform that could track in real time where individual teams are located and help dispatch teams more accurately.

While the city currently continues to work with the four nonprofit behavioral health organizations, Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration announced last year that it planned to sever its $3.8 million contract with the Consortium, which provides mobile crisis services in West Philadelphia.

City leaders said the organization “defaulted” on its contract obligations by failing to maintain its tax-exempt status, Axios reported. The organization has been working to appeal the decision.

DBHIDS interim commissioner Marquita Williams said as of right now, the nonprofit continues to provide mobile crisis services.

“It has not yet been determined that there will be a transition [to a new provider],” she said. “But in the case that that would happen, we have been having meetings around looking at providers in the area that we can transfer services to, making sure that there’s continuity of care, making sure … there’s no delay or gap in services.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. The hotline is staffed 24/7 by trained counselors who can offer free, confidential support. Spanish speakers can call 1-888-628-9454. People who are deaf or hard of hearing can call 1-800-799-4889.