INFO PAGE
Integrated Neighborhood Street Teams
Expedited responses to behavioral health, overdose, and other urgent needs on San Francisco's streets.
Citywide Street Team Consolidation
The City has consolidated street teams across five city departments (Department of Public Health (DPH), Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), Emergency Management (DEM), Police (SFPD) and Fire (SFFD).
The new model streamlines operations to improve street conditions, with the services teams focused on increasing service connections for people experiencing homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction.
The new unified team will take a proactive and reactive approach to:
- Identifying hotspots and individuals that/who need immediate attention on a daily basis
- Creating neighborhood-based client priority lists of individuals who are in the most need of support and/or the most disruptive to the community.
Department of Emergency Management
Serves as the operational lead of service delivery team staffed by DPH and HSH employees and contractors.
DPH Street Health
Provides medical, behavioral health, overdose prevention and support services on the unified City Street Team, including:
- Mental health services: low-barrier counseling, linkage to mental health treatment, street-based psychiatric care, 5150 assessment and initiation, conservatorship applications and coordination with conservator's office.
- Substance use services: post-overdose follow-up, screening for substance use disorder (SUD), linkage to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), including on-the-spot telehealth visits with addiction medicine specialists, linkage to residential and other outpatient treatment.
- Medical services: primary care, wound care, chronic disease stabilization and management, linkage to ongoing medical treatment, HIV/Hepatitis C/STI infection testing, treatment, and prevention.
- Other services: peer support, shelter/housing linkages, and linkages to case management.
Fire Department
Will collaborate with the unified City Street Team but will stay in crisis-response mode.
Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing
Operates the HOT team.
EMS-6
This is the first team that brought together community paramedics with clinicians. The EMS-6 team works with people who use emergency services the most. Many are experiencing homelessness and face substance use and/or mental health disorders. EMS monitors 911 calls, and gets calls from caseworkers to respond to people who need help. They provide urgent care and transport people to the hospital or to shelter.
Street Crisis Response Team (SCRT)
The Street Crisis Response Team (SCRT) operates citywide, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. SCRT provides rapid, trauma-informed emergency care to people in acute crisis. SCRT teams address urgent behavioral health and wellness issues. They provide linkages to critical resources for people with complex health needs such as urgent care, emergency shelter, substance-abuse treatment, mental health and medical clinics, and residential programs.
SCRT units are staffed with a Community Paramedic, an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) or second paramedic, and either a Peer Counselor or a Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) specialist. Behavioral health clinicians are a core part of SCRT. On March 4, 2023, the SCRT program reconfigured its team composition to improve outcomes for people in crisis, to be able to respond to a broader range of crisis calls, and to offer follow-up after the crisis. Behavioral Health clinicians now provide follow-up support through the expanded City's Office of Coordinated Care (OCC), offering follow-up to people who got a response from an SCRT unit. Follow-up includes care coordination and connections to critical resources.
Response: 911 calls related to (a behavioral health crisis or serious wellness need) and "on views" (meaning teams can proactively stop if they see something)
Street Overdose Response Team (SORT)
SORT connects with people in the critical moments after they experienced an overdose. Community paramedics can initiate medication-assisted treatments, such as buprenorphine, in the field to better assist individuals with substance use disorders, rescue kits, educational materials, and with support to get into substance use treatment and shelter. Follow up teams include a street medicine specialist from the Department of Public Health, peer specialists and behavioral health clinicians.
Response: 911 calls about an overdose; follow-ups in the days after the initial response