Check-in Groups: A Novel Structured Crisis Intervention Model

Abstract

Crisis intervention teams, task forces, and healthcare coalitions are not new concepts. For over 20 years, theState of Indiana has hadan operational model of statewide emotional support and interventionteamswhich can be deployed to crisis events, consisting of volunteer professionals from various mental health and crisis intervention backgrounds.Traditionally, team interactionsand “callouts”(state deployment of teams) to crisis events in the fieldhavebeen face-to-faceor, less commonly, via telephone. In March 2020, amidst the early onset of COVID-19, the largeststate team, encompassing the county of the state capitaland the surrounding seven counties,was activated to organize the provision ofemotional and psychological support to a variety of individuals within essential and first responder organizations in Indiana. The original district team was expanded into a task force, consisting of key public and private stakeholders, in order to fulfill the seven missions issued from the state in the first two quarters of COVID-19. Allthe missions were delivered using virtual methods and utilized variations of evidence-informed intervention models and techniques. The COVID-19 pandemic launched extraordinary cooperation between 25 state and local agencies, hundreds of volunteers, and made available interventions to thousands of state citizens and public servantswith two goals: keep people healthy and in service. Daily virtual meetings and virtual Just in Time Trainings were utilized to quickly implement training of interventions and new conceptualmodels of care;“check-in groups.”The news and impact of the check-in groups model was growing,and additional agencies/organizations expressed interest toimplementemotional support programming for their employees.The feedback from organizations,stakeholders,and team members provides some preliminary qualitative data of favorable impact of the “check-in groups” model for community or organizational-based crisis intervention andemotional support. This was a pilot program developed and implemented during an active pandemic eventwiththe limitation of evaluation and assessment-planning being prioritized after initial implementation. Collective local and state teams are committed to and interested in continued efforts to evaluate the model’s effectiveness. This will help propel progress forward in the evaluation of future missions and upcoming challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, financial crisis, civil unrest, and other known and yet to come critical incidents.