CARES teams expand demand as Madison Fire tells council about non‑police crisis responses

Madison Fire Department briefed the Common Council on CARES (Community Alternative Response Emergency Services), a co‑response crisis team that pairs community paramedics with behavioral‑health crisis workers.

"The demand for service on CARES has gone nowhere but up," Assistant Fire Chief Chris Hammes said, summarizing the service's expansion since 2021. Hammes said CARES now operates three weekday teams (staggered hours) plus a weekend team; since inception the program has responded to roughly 12,000 calls and engaged more than 7,000 unique clients. He noted that about 65% of responses are in-person on location, roughly 25% of encounters result in transport (about half of those to emergency departments), and approximately 2% of CARES calls are transferred to law enforcement.

Hammes outlined CARES’s goals: to route nonviolent behavioral‑health emergencies to appropriate community resources, reduce unnecessary emergency-department transports and free police and fire resources for other duties. CARES staff include community paramedics from Madison Fire and crisis workers from Journey Mental Health; the program emphasizes nonemergency responses (no lights and sirens) and plain‑clothes or low‑visibility approaches to reduce anxiety for people in crises.

Madison is piloting an expansion into Sun Prairie; Hammes said the pilot delivered 87 responses during the quarter covered and that Sun Prairie elected to fund continued local service through 2026. Councilmembers raised dispatching and co‑response questions; Hammes said dispatchers add law‑enforcement response when call information indicates safety concerns, and that the city is now tracking CARES requests it cannot fulfill (times when no team is available) to inform capacity decisions.

Hammes also said CARES is testing new sprinter vans outfitted for mobile workspace and transport to improve service delivery.

Next steps: continue tracking unmet CARES demand, evaluate whether additional teams or hours are needed, and monitor outcomes for clients and impacts on police/hospital workload.