 I'm Tom Handell with another CTN member highlight, and today we're focusing on the South Portland Police Department. And with me is Donna Betts, the executive director and founder of Family Hope. That's right now working with the South Portland Police Department. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Before we get into how you work with the South Portland Police Department, could you tell us a little bit about what Family Hope is and your own story? We are a resource connection for people who care about someone living with mental illness. And we work mostly with family members of adults who have a mental illness. And Family Hope was founded because of what happened in our family. When my oldest son was 23, he had a really serious bout of depression. And so I called everybody that I could think of to try and get help for him. But because he was 23, I wasn't able to make any appointments for him. I couldn't make him do anything. And it was really scary. So I ended up by calling one of the emergency numbers and I said, okay, so I can't make him get help. What is there for us, for the family members? You know, his friends are worried, we're worried. And we want somebody to come and meet with us and just tell us what is going on? What are some of our options? And I was told, oh, there isn't anything like that. But you can call us here 24 hours a day. And I remember getting off the phone and I was thinking to myself, so what are we supposed to do? Watch our son die. And then that's what happened. He died by suicide five years ago. So after that happened, I thought, this is ridiculous. This just can't continue on. So we, as a few of us, and we formed Family Hope and we put up a website. And the purpose of the website is just for basic information for family members. So when they think something's wrong or they know that they're, especially adult child has mental illness, they can go there and find some basic information on things they can do to be proactive. So even though we don't have a right to make our loved one get help, there are things that we can do. And that's what Family Hope is. Now I know that so often when people have a situation where they're dealing with a person with challenging behavior, either in their family or not, their first thing to do is to call the police department if it seems like a big problem. How do you interact with the South Portland Police Department to help them with that? Well, I had the privilege of going in and speaking with a lot of the officers. And I wanted to share with them my experience, my personal experience with police officers in our town and how important they are to us. Because when they come to our home, when we have to call them in the first place, it's kind of embarrassing that you need the help of the police department. And to have them come into our home, especially when they are CIT trained. And that stands for Crisis Intervention Training and all the police officers in South Portland have CIT training and it makes a huge difference. So when they come in, they know how to react to the person who's living with mental illness and having a problem at that time. So when I went in to talk with them, I also wanted them to know that we're here, the family members are here, and now there's a resource for the family members to call. So if the police have to take our adult loved one to the emergency room and we're left behind with all this chaos that has happened, what do we do? Now they know that they can call us and we'll help connect them with the resources that are helpful for them. Now how often, how long has this relationship been going on and how often do you get calls from family members? We've received about, we helped 100 families last year. We're starting a new program this year where we're actually, we have a social worker on staff now and the social worker will meet face to face with family members. So this is exactly what we needed when Josh was so sick. So now we have a program set up for that. Our website is only a year old. We've had more than 4,000 unique visitors to the website and that is just amazing to me. So I'm just very proud for how things are going right now. Do you interface with other law enforcement agencies too as well? Yes. Actually I live in Scarborough and the Scarborough Police Department has been wonderful. Portland Police Department also, they're all very, very supportive of family hope and of any kind of, any kind of program or service that helps them do their job better. You know, their officers come in and sometimes our loved ones might have a knife or just be violent. They're putting their lives at risk so we want to make sure that they're really safe and we want to make sure family members understand that when the police get there, they are in charge at that point and just because your adult child, you think your adult child wouldn't hurt you, it's very possible when their illness is taken over that they could. So the police are there just to make sure everybody's safe and they do such a great job. Sounds like a wonderful program. Where do people go for more information or what is the website? They can go to our website at www.familyhopeme.org. Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me.