Davidson wants permanent funding for mental health response program

Emma Davidson said she would take the case to Chief Minister and Treasurer Andrew Barr in a push to secure more funding for the Police, Ambulance, Clinician Emergency Response program, known as PACER.

"I'm really looking forward to talking to the Treasurer about what we can do to make PACER a permanent part of our mental health service landscape in the ACT," she said.

PACER is a program where a paramedic, police officer and mental health clinician travel in an unmarked car to respond to mental health incidents in the territory.

There are two cars in the program and the government announced on Wednesday it would fund the second car until the end of June.

Beyond that, the future of the service is unclear despite police pushing for the service to expand further.

However, Ms Davidson has indicated her desire to expand the service.

She said the government had also conducted an evaluation of PACER which showed it was an effective service. She said this evaluation was crucial in ensuring the program received continued funding.

"I'm also thinking about how we expand the service and make it even more effective," she said.

Ms Davidson also said the government could ensure greater support for people after they had been seen by a PACER team.

"I've actually heard some great feedback from police officers who have worked with the PACER team over the last couple of years talking about the skills they have developed from working alongside mental health clinicians that they have been able to take back into their community policing work in other teams," she said.

About 40 per cent of police attendances are mental health related and ACT chief police officer Neil Gaughan said demand for the service had outstripped the two-car resource.

ACT Policing acting commander Matt Heather said PACER crews attend about five jobs a day and, on average, only one of those people end up in hospital.

"We find people experiencing mental health crisis primarily need clinical support so the police role is to make sure that everyone is kept safe and that includes particularly the patient, the PACER team and the wider community," he said.

"I think having the police as responders to make sure everyone is kept safe is really important."

Canberra Health Services executive director of mental health Katie McKenzie said the number of callouts did not reflect the complexity of what was involved in those interactions.

She said the program was critically important and she would like to ensure the program was made permanent.

"It's absolutely a critically important response as part of a mental health spectrum of care. There are times that we do need to respond to the community and doing that with police and with our ambulance partners as well means that it can be done as safely and effectively as possible," she said.

"I would like to see permanency, stability and clarity to actually allow us to move onto the next phase which is what's needed in the space outside of the hospital and the emergency department to support people."