Alexis Moyer, a mental health co-responder for the Lansdale Police Department, has made more than 500 formal contacts with members of the community since September. (Courtesy of the Lansdale Police Department)
LANSDALE — Nearly a year after joining the Lansdale Police Department, the town’s first mental health co-responder continues to make a difference.
Borough council also heard an update earlier this month on how co-responder Alexis Moyer continues to help build connections between police, local residents and the agencies and organisations that provide the services people need.
“I personally have a little bit of a caseload of 18 people, checking in to see if they’re still receiving services or if they don’t have housing. We have 18 people that we’re checking in and supervising on a regular basis to make sure they’re OK or if they need access to any medical care,” she said.
“This is not a ‘kind of’ case count, this is the case count,” Mayor Gary Herbert responded.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Lansdale Police and Borough Council have worked with area police and local nonprofits and agencies to respond to homelessness and mental health issues caused or exacerbated by the pandemic. These collaborative efforts have evolved into regular meetings of the “North Penn Hub,” where local police departments and agencies work together to meet monthly to solve problems they all face. This includes Merakie, the local chapter of a national nonprofit that connects people in need of services with adult behavioral health, autism, addiction recovery, veterans’ support, aging, children and families, and other services.
In April 2023, the City Council issued a job description for mental health co-responders, and in June of that year, it commissioned Melarky to develop a mental health co-responder program to work with police on certain types of emergency calls. The program launched in late August, with police reporting on her early success in October, and Moyer herself giving her first report to the Public Safety Committee on her work to date in February.
On June 5, Moyer gave another update, sharing personal success stories and the relationships he’s built with local organizations to help those in need.
She has spent the past few months visiting St. John’s United Church of Christ to talk about the meals they provide to the hungry and to help teach “how to calm someone who may be in crisis” during her visits.
In April, they similarly trained four Lansdale Police Department squads in de-escalation techniques while continuing to refer residents to local agencies such as Merakie, the Main Street nonprofit food pantry Manna and the domestic violence nonprofit Laurel House.
“I also work at Knapp Elementary School and we have a little bit of a waiting list so we have five families waiting to be served,” she said.
‘In the right place’
Moyer said that during a recent visit to Manna with police officers, they received a report from staff at the North Penn Commons complex of a crisis happening in an apartment there, and because an ambulance had not yet arrived, the pair immediately went to help.
“While we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I asked lots of questions. He had only moved in mid-September so he was new. Long story short, he should have had lots of support in place, including a home aide 35 hours a week, but due to a lack of resources he only had a home aide 15 hours a week,” Moyer said.
“I said, ‘I’m in the right place at the right time, can I come and see you again next week?’ He said sure. This was about five or six weeks ago, and I’ve been seeing him every week,” Moyer said.
And she has since helped him file claims with insurance companies and arrange visits from doctors, home health aides and other service providers.
“Now he has a lot of people coming into his house and asking, ‘What have you done to me?'” Moyer said. “I tell them, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.'”
About human relationships
Police Chief Mike Trail added that Moyer has now made more than 500 formal contacts with area residents since the initiative began in September. The two met recently with Allentown City Council members to discuss the program and its success so far.
“What we’re doing here is a best practice approach to working with people who are in crisis in our community. It’s effective. This model is being validated by all the communities that are now adopting this model,” Trail said.
The police department has asked the City Council to continue subsidizing the position and possibly adding a second assistant, and the chief told the Council’s Public Safety Committee that his goal is to ask the Council for funding in the 2026 budget to hire Moyer as the city’s sole officer.
“There are several benefits to having her as an employee, many of which relate to safety and disclosure,” Trail said.
“Information sharing is the most important challenge we face,” he said, adding that some agencies and systems “sometimes don’t want to talk to each other, so having her in-house as a member of the police department will make it safer for her by ensuring she has access to communications and the ability to share information on all sides.”
Councilman Andrew Carroll asked whether the town’s success with the program in the past would make grant funding more feasible.
Trail and Herbert said early grant funding may make a second round of grant funding less likely from some sources but more likely from others, and they will keep the committee updated as grant funding already secured is used up.
The mayor then asked what kind of interactions co-responders have the most, to which Moyer replied, “It varies from day to day,” and said they mostly focus on building relationships with people who may distrust authorities due to previous trauma.
“In one case, I went out multiple times a week to convince him that I was friendly and that I wasn’t going to hurt him. That’s why this program works. Police don’t go out. They’re busy with police work. They don’t have time to build these relationships,” Moyer said. “Those relationship building efforts are so important to get these people where they need to be.”
“Thank her.”
Councilman Michael Yetter asked whether the people Moyer interacts with tend to be enrolled in certain programs, such as Medicare, that could cover the cost of needed services, and Moyer said that, too, varies on a case-by-case basis.
“If they don’t have insurance at all, we send them to Merakie where they can apply (for insurance). There are a lot of barriers and tiers there because if someone doesn’t have insurance, they have to wait 30 days to get insurance established. They have to have an address. So if someone is uninsured with no home, where do they establish an address?” Moyer said.
One particularly prominent issue, she said, is that waiting lists for certain services have increased dramatically since the pandemic, with people now waiting up to a year to see a child psychiatrist if they need help.
“In the meantime, there’s been a lot of big issues going on and we’re just trying to deal with it. The biggest issue is a lack of resources,” she said.
Council vice-chair Meg Curry Teo said she would keep the council updated on any future grant opportunities and was grateful for the work Moyer had done, particularly for young people who have lost the opportunity to attend school because of the pandemic and have been waiting long periods for the support they need.
“A year is a big thing for a seven-year-old. It was amazing. We’re so grateful to her for being here and giving us such a great update,” Ms Teo said.
Lansdale’s Borough Council will next meet on June 20th at 7pm and the Public Safety Committee will next meet on July 3rd at 6:30pm, both at Borough City Hall, 1 Vine Street. For more information, visit www.Lansdale.org.
