Intercept 1

Chronic Consumer Stabilization Initiative (CCSI)

Co-Responder program to assist individuals with serious mental health crises and frequent encounters with law enforcement

Chronic Consumer Stabilization Initiative (CCSI) is a collaborative effort between the Houston Police Department and The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD. CCSI is a program designed to identify, engage, and provide services to individuals who have been diagnosed with a serious and persistent mental illness, and have frequent encounters with the Houston Police Department either through their own initiative or by family and/collateral contacts. CCSI Staff work with these individuals to attempt to engage them in mental health services and provide assistance in acquiring needed social services, with the intended goal of interrupting the cycle of repeated encounters with law enforcement and repeated psychiatric hospitalizations.

• Reduce the number of interactions between the individual diagnosed with serious and persistent mental illness and the Houston Police Department.
• Identify unmet needs and barriers in the community that contribute to an individual’s inability to engage and remain in mental health treatment.
• Link and coordinate individuals with mental health treatment.
• Provide support and education to individuals and family members, to minimize contact with law enforcement resulting from non-compliance with mental health treatment.
• Facilitate compliance with recommended mental health treatment to reduce the number of involuntary commitments to the Neuropsychiatric Center, decrease homelessness, reduce victimization, decrease substance abuse, and minimize interactions with law enforcement, while improving their quality of life.

• Outreach and Engagement
• Intensive Case Management
• Mental Health First Aid for client, family, & other support systems
• Linkage to secure, stable housing
• Linkage to primary healthcare
• Linkage to outpatient psychiatric care and supportive service
• Linkage with substance abuse treatment
• Empowering client to assume responsibility for mental health compliance
• Crisis Intervention

Participants are identified and referred to the Chronic Consumer Stabilization Initiative Program (CCSI) through the Houston Police Department’s Mental Health Division. Eligible individuals have an extensive history of interactions and contacts with the Houston Police Department. These encounters generally result in admission to mental health crisis services or psychiatric hospitalization. Many of these individuals have also committed crimes due to their illness and HPD officers are able to divert them to appropriate mental health services as an alternative to automatic incarceration.