In an effort to address community concerns and to improve both community and agency understanding, the following steps have been taken at the Clay County Sheriff's Office to expand mental health training and programs.

• Training:
  • Critical Incident Management , based on Memphis model, improves the ability of officers to deal safely with individuals with mental illness or substance use disorders.
  • Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement Officers increases deputy skills to balance their personal and family needs with the extreme demands of the job.
  • New Family Orientation offers family members insight into the job of new deputy and ways to preserve stability amidst uncertainty.
• Programs:
  • Special Citizen Forms offer individuals or group homes to register helpful information in the CCSO database that might help deputies perform their duties more safely.   For example, some families request that deputies be aware that a person lives at their address that has behavior problems, but may be unable to understand commands given by deputy.
  • Sheriff's Family Association offers a support group and activities for family members of leo
  • Critical Incident Response Team comprised of several deputies selected for special training to give support to responding deputies at certain high stress calls
  • Clergy Disaster Team comprised of volunteer community clergy specially trained to augment CCSO response in the case of a natural or manmade disaster.
  • Supervisor Training provides positive management of agency personnel based on core values and accepted criteria for good leadership.