HLTH 8465 Week 9 Interagency Conflict Case Paper Example

Conflict Case: A Pending Charge at the Crisis Center Door, Where Custody and Voluntary Care Meet

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 8465: Strategic Planning: Collaboration, Cooperation, and Coordination

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Conflict Case: A Pending Charge at the Crisis Center Door, Where Custody and Voluntary Care Meet

Introduction

A crisis receiving center that deputies are meant to use has to decide what happens when a person they bring has a pending minor charge. In the composite county's center, the sheriff's office answers to a mandate of public safety and custody, and the county behavioral health authority to a mandate of voluntary care in the least restrictive setting. This case describes one composite night in the center's first month, gives each agency's account in its own terms, explains why the clash would persist regardless of the people involved and compares settlements by what each asks of both agencies. Questions of law are identified and left to counsel.

The Night

At about one in the morning, two deputies bring a man in his thirties to the center. He was found inside a closed business, distressed and talking about voices; the owner wants to press a trespass charge, and the deputies have written a citation. At intake, center staff assess him as in acute crisis but not meeting criteria for an involuntary hold. He agrees to stay voluntarily. The deputies leave to return to patrol.

Around five, the man says he wants to leave. Staff offer him a meal, a bed and a follow-up appointment, and talk with him for some time. He declines and walks out. Staff notify the authority's on-call supervisor, as their protocol requires. At seven, the business owner calls the sheriff's office to ask whether the man has been charged and where he is.

The Sheriff's Account

From the sheriff's office's view, deputies did what the partnership asked: they brought a person in crisis to the center instead of to jail or an emergency department. They expected that the center would hold him, or at least tell them before he left, so that the pending charge could be resolved and the business owner given an answer. Instead, he left without notice, and the office now faces a citizen asking why a man found in her business was let go. The deputies' supervisor worries that if this happens again, deputies will stop using the center and return to booking, because booking at least produces a known outcome.

The Authority's Account

From the authority's view, center staff did what the center exists to do: they stabilized a man in crisis, offered him care and respected his right to leave, since he did not meet criteria for an involuntary hold. The center is voluntary by design; national guidance describes crisis receiving facilities that accept all referrals and emphasize least restrictive care (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2020). Holding him for a minor charge would turn the center into a holding facility and undermine the trust that brings people in voluntarily. Notifying deputies about a voluntary patient's departure raises privacy questions the authority is not sure it can answer.

Why the Clash Persists

Both accounts are reasonable, and the clash would recur with different people in the same roles. Thornton and Ocasio describe institutional logics as socially constructed patterns of practices, assumptions, values and rules through which people in organizations make sense of their work and decide what counts as appropriate action (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999). Two logics meet at the center's door. The sheriff's office works within a logic of public safety and custody, in which a person with a pending charge is someone whose whereabouts the system must know and whose case must be resolved. The authority works within a logic of voluntary care, in which the person is a patient with rights, and the least restrictive setting is the goal.

Each logic defines what a good outcome on that night would have been: for the sheriff, a resolved charge and an informed citizen; for the authority, a man who received care and left freely. Neither can be achieved fully without compromising the other. That is why the conflict is structural rather than personal, and why a settlement must ask something of both agencies rather than asking one to yield.

Settlements Compared

Table 1 compares four possible settlements.

Table 1

Settlements Compared by What Each Asks of Each Agency

Recommended Settlement

The third and fourth settlements together keep both mandates intact. For minor charges, deputies would issue a citation with a court date at the scene before bringing a person to the center, so that the charge is resolved through the ordinary process regardless of what happens at the center. The center would ask each person brought by deputies, at intake, whether it may tell the sheriff's office if they leave; when consent is given, it would notify. For more serious charges, deputies would keep custody, and the center would not be the right destination.

This settlement asks something real of both agencies. The sheriff's office accepts that it will not always know where a person is, and changes its practice at the scene. The authority accepts a consent and notification step at intake that some staff may see as a burden. Fisher, Ury and Patton's advice to look behind positions to interests applies here: the sheriff's interest is a resolved charge and a credible answer to citizens, not custody as such, and the authority's interest is voluntary care, not secrecy (Fisher et al., 2011). Whether citation in lieu of arrest is available for the relevant charges, and what consent and notification are permitted under health privacy law, are questions for counsel.

What the Case Shows About the Partnership

The case shows that some conflicts in the partnership are not failures of goodwill but meeting points of legitimate mandates. The governance structure recommended earlier should therefore include a standing joint protocol group, with members from both agencies, to settle such questions in advance rather than after each incident. The first protocol it should write is this one.

References

Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in (3rd ed.). Penguin Books.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2020). National guidelines for behavioral health crisis care: Best practice toolkit. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Thornton, P. H., & Ocasio, W. (1999). Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958-1990. American Journal of Sociology, 105(3), 801-843. https://doi.org/10.1086/210361