The Churchill Fellows Association of Western Australia Churchill Fellowship to establish diversionary practices for mentally and intellectually disabled persons engaging police

Glen was able to embed with multi-agency teams in Canada, USA and UK, which were both Law Enforcement and non-Law Enforcement lead seeking to divert vulnerable individuals from the judicial system. Initially heading with a focus on law enforcement lead diversion of intellectually impaired individuals he realised this was too narrow a scope on two fronts.

Firstly: - in the real world "mental health" incidents aren't easily defined by clinical diagnosis. Emergency Services respond to individuals in "mental crisis" who are neurodiverse, substance use affected, mentally ill or comorbid. Therefore jurisdictions should change their language around crisis to reflect this by referring to these moments as Behavioural Health Crisis. Emergency services respond to the 'Behaviour' of a 'Health Crisis'.

Secondly; - Law Enforcement are not responsible for identification and management of High Utilisers of crisis service. But this doesn't mean Health or NGO's are. Rather successful programs had multi-agency collaborative partnerships agreeing these individuals are usually a shared resourcing demand requiring a shared response.

Ultimately Glen's report is compiled with the focus of diversion which can be broken into for distinct stages:

1. Call Diversion - divert calls away from law enforcement
2. Response Diversion - identify appropriate non-law enforcement crisis response systems
3. Outcome Diversion - identify better places or outcomes where those who need to be apprehended for safety can be managed
4. High Utiliser Diversion - Shared collaborative proactive programs with objectives of breaking an individual Behavioural Health Crisis cycling

To fully understand these principles Glen's full report is accessible here on the Winston Churchill Trust (Australia) website.