Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) are community-based programs that bring together law enforcement, mental health professionals, advocates, people living with mental illness and their families, and other partners to improve community responses to people experiencing mental health crises. 

 THE GOALS OF A CIT PROGRAM 

1.  To improve safety during law enforcement encounters with people experiencing a mental health crisis, for everyone involved.
2.  To increase connections to effective and timely mental health services for people in mental health crisis.
3.  To use law enforcement strategically during crisis situations—such as when there is an imminent threat to safety or a criminal concern—and increase the role of mental health professionals, peer support specialists, and other community supports.
4.  To reduce the trauma that people experience during a mental health crisis and thus contribute to their long-term recovery.

 NAMI Ohio works in conjunction with the Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence (CJ CCoE) in the Department of Psychiatry of Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED). This partnership supports providing technical assistance in the development and maintenance of CIT programs and criminal justice-mental health collaborations through improving and enhancing CIT resources and information. With funding provided by OhioMHAS through the CJ CCoE, NAMI Ohio provides financial support to Ohio CIT programs through CIT training mini-grants and law enforcement scholarships to attend CIT training. Additionally, this funding is used by NAMI Ohio to support and encourage persons with lived experience, peers, advocates, and family members to participate in local CIT training, CIT steering and advisory committees, Sequential Intercept Mapping (SIM) workshops, and similar activities that ensure meaningful representation of individuals with lived experience. 

 To learn more about CITs in Ohio, access CIT program resources, locate the current training calendar, and more, please visit the Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence’s website at neomed.edu/cjccoe/cit/ 

 Goals of a CIT Program are taken from pages 4-5 of CIT International’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Programs: A Best Practice Guide for Transforming Community Responses to Mental Health Crises.  For access to this publication visit https://www.citinternational.org/bestpracticeguide/. 

DOWNLOAD CIT INFO SHEET INCLUDING GOALS OF CRISIS INTERVENTION TEAMS

Guidance for CIT Mini-Grants and Law Enforcement Scholarship

The CJ CCoE and NAMI Ohio collaborate to make mini-grants and scholarships available to Ohio CIT training programs. Funding for mini-grants and scholarships is made possible through awards from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

For more information about these grants and how to apply click here