Willamette Valley Crisis Care has received a grant from the Chambers Family Foundation to do community trainings around crisis intervention and skill building for collective care. This event is part of a series offered to various communities to do some visioning together around community safety and care—what's here and what's needed—and share some tangible skills. The skills focus on self-attunement, crisis intervention and de-escalation, and boundaries. These are geared towards community...

By Berkley Carnine Published in the Eugene Weekly, July 23, 2026 - This week I learned of a community member lost to suicide after seeking help. He n eeded timely, attuned support that he or a loved one once could’ve called in. I felt a similar grief as when over the winter a veteran died by suicide in front of St. Vincent de Paul in Eugene after three years on a housing waitlist. As a CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) worker laid off in April 2025, I texted with my...

Our bid for a community response remained true to three key elements that define the community responder model. 1. We are dispatched for welfare checks, public assists, and other forms of support as an alternative response to Fire/EMS and Law Enforcement. 2. Services are consent based: we never take peoples’ rights away. 3. The alternative response is made up of a crisis worker/ peer and medic allowing teams to assess and provide care for the whole person. Our bold proposal to expand...