New Hanover County launches crisis response portal as a community resource
New Hanover County is taking steps to educate public service professionals on crisis response. That includes launching a Community Resource Portal.
The county recently collaborated with Trillium, Coastal Horizons and the New Hanover County Resilience Task Force to host an all-day conference for public service professionals, including teachers, school resource officers, mental health therapists, violence interrupters and program coordinators. The conference’s intent was to train the public service professionals on various strategies and methods to effectively respond to moments of crisis.
According to Bo Dean, New Hanover County's human resources senior analyst for learning and development, the reasoning for such initiatives is because moments of high stress can trigger automatic responses from people, which can be challenging, especially when serving in the best interest of the county’s students.
The portal announced at the conference is an online guide for people seeking resources related to mental health, substance use, housing, food insecurity and other emergency assistance in New Hanover County. The site breaks down providers into categories of service and provides information on how to connect. It also maps out geographically where the services are located, showing people available resources nearest to them.
“The portal is linked on the front page of our website, and we’ve worked to share it with community partners as well as departments in New Hanover County that are public facing work with people who need to be connected to resources, like Health and Human Services and Port City United,” said Alex Riley, New Hanover County spokesperson. “We will also be routinely promoting it on social media and updating the information on the site as providers are added or contact information changes.”
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: New Hanover County crisis response training and resources available
