Willamette Valley Crisis Care
About Us
Our Mission
We connect community members to an ecosystem of support and accompany people through crisis toward stability, increasing resiliency for individuals and capacity for burdened systems. We educate community locally and nationally around the necessity of non-coercive, trauma-informed responses. Through direct service, consulting, and national partnerships, we build collective capacity for safety and mutual care, destigmitize mental health and addiction, and tend to the wounds of structural injustice. Our mobile integrated health services are grounded in harm reduction, trauma-informed care and consent, and connect clients to the right resource at the right time.
Our Vision
WVCC is part of redefining community safety and imagining a world in which people have their basic physical and emotional needs met--including respect, dignity, and agency over decisions that impact them.
Our Values
Transparency and Trust
Collaboration and Consent
Centering the Margins
Collective Empowerment
Our History
Willamette Valley Crisis Care was founded by a collective of former CAHOOTS workers in April 2025, in response to a deficit in consent-based trauma-informed crisis response care available in Eugene. We are experienced social workers, medics and direct service providers, committed to standing up crisis services in Eugene as well as local de-escalation training and national consultation with new programs across the country.
Land Acknowledgment
Since time immemorial, the Kalapuya people have been the Indigenous stewards to our region building dynamic communities, maintaining balance with wildlife, and enacting sustainable land practices. A land acknowledgement is a way of resisting the erasure of Indigenous histories and to honor Native communities by inviting truth and reconciliation. Following treaties between 1851 and 1855, Kalapuya people were dispossessed of their Indigenous homeland by the United States government and forcibly removed to the Coast Reservation in Western Oregon. As we consider the impacts of colonization, we also acknowledge the strength and resiliency of displaced Indigenous people. The City of Eugene is built within the traditional homelands known as Kalapuya Ilihi. Kalapuya descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon, they continue to make contributions in our communities here and across the lands. We express our respect for the inherent political sovereignty of all federally recognized Tribal Nations and Indigenous people who live in the State of Oregon and across the nation (City of Eugene, City Manager's Office, Intergovernmental Tribal Relations)
Our Founders
Laurel Lisovskis, LCSW
Laurel Lisovskis, LCSW, moved from Minneapolis to make the Willamette Valley her home in 1998. She’s been here ever since, working and raising her daughter Hannah, now grown and living in LA. Having got her BSW in 1997, she’s always been involved in community work and has built deep roots both in the public education system and in public safety. Laurel is a direct service worker at heart, working with folks in crisis and specializing in those who have experienced institutional harm and trauma. She also enjoys teaching and training others in the important skills of working with people, especially those impacted by burdened and ineffective systems. Most days, Laurel can be found hiking Spencer’s Butte, talking on the phone to Hannah and listening to her share about her LA adventures.
Berkley Carnine, QMHA
Berkley is an educator, crisis worker, and organizer who grew up Eugene, Or, lived in the Bay Area and throughout the Southwest for over twenty years before returning home in 2020. Berkley worked as a mobile crisis counselor and Community Education specialist with CAHOOTS. They have a Master in Fine Arts and twelve years of teaching experience in university and community college settings. She has twenty years of community organizing experience including facilitating trainings and workshops on topics such as anti-oppression, nervous system support, and better bystander intervention. As a somatic practitioner, Berkley has been offering sessions and workshops in nervous system regulation and trauma resolution since 2016. They bring their passion for healing, empowerment, and collective liberation to everything they do. She lives on a queer suburban land project with so many furry and feathered beings, five adults and a child they co-parent with their sister and sister’s wife. They enjoy writing speculative fiction, playing music, and being in water of all temperatures.
Michelle Perin, LCSW, MS, NREMT
Michelle Perin, LCSW, MS, NREMT has spent 27 years working in community safety.
With experience in traditional public safety roles (9-1-1 Dispatcher, Firefighter/EMT) and behavioral health (Children’s Residential, Mobile Integrated Crisis Care, Veterans Administration Therapist), she has a unique ability to bridge between these systems. She began with White Bird CAHOOTS in 2016. She worked on the van, as a clinical supervisor and coordinator and provided community training, especially to law enforcement and EMS partners. She continues to be a contracted subject matter expert for OHSU’s ECHO Deflection Project co-training law enforcement throughout Oregon and sits on the Alliance for Safety and Justice’s Scaling Safety Technical Advisory Council. Michelle remained dedicated and in love with the client-led, non-coercive, compassionate direct care work of White Bird CAHOOTS until she volunteered to be laid off with 80% of the team in April 2025. Unwilling to see this essential community safety service disappear, she co-founded Willamette Valley Crisis Care and is advocating for the return of this service to the community. Michelle loves her dog, Mike, hiking, sitting in a steam sauna and all things glittery.
Alese "Dandy" Colehour, QMHA, NREMT
Dandy is also a transplant from Minnesota, moving to Oregon to attend graduate school at University of Oregon in 2010. In 2015, they dropped out of their Ph.D. program in Anthropology to pursue a profession that was more community-oriented. They started working for CAHOOTS in 2016 as a crisis counselor and cross-trained as an EMT in 2021. They love direct service work but since the closure of CAHOOTS in Eugene have been assisting WVCC with media, administration, and grant writing. An aspiring medical social worker, they anticipate graduating from Portland State University in June of 2026 with a Master of Social Work after completing their advanced practicum at PeaceHealth Riverbend. When they aren't busy working on WVCC, they enjoy playing washtub bass with their band, an annual summit up a mountain, and homesteading on a small organic seed farm.
