Crisis Intervention Team – New Jersey (CITNJ) was a program started under the Mental Health Association in Southwestern NJ in 2007. The program has grown and is now facilitated by Legacy Treatment Services and is funded through a contract with the NJ Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services and is based on the best practices of the CIT International program and National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

The NJ CIT Center of Excellence supports and assists counties throughout the state in developing the CIT-NJ program for their communities. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT-NJ) program is an innovative international police model that incorporates collaboration between the community's law enforcement system and mental health system to respond to the needs of those in psychiatric crisis. This partnership develops and sustains a 40 hour CIT certification program for its police departments and mental health providers in order to provide them with knowledge about mental illnesses, crisis resolution skills and access to community based services.

• Legacy's CIT program is instrumental in establishing and overseeing county specific steering committees and expanding CIT to new areas within the state. The program ensures each county operates their CIT program at the high level established through best practices.
• Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) brings community stakeholders together to provide a safer and more effective response to people with mental illnesses who are in crisis.
• CIT is transforming communities across the nation by helping to improve access to mental health services.
• CIT is a strong collaborative voice helping to maintain community resources for mental health and substance abuse services.
• CIT programs across our nation are building and improving linkages and infrastructures necessary to connect people with mental health resources.
• CIT is more than just training. We are a community of partners working together to improve people's lives through education and advocacy.
• CIT is working to eliminate stigma so people can seek and receive the help they need in times of mental health crisis.

Encounters between first responders and veterans in crisis can be extremely dangerous and even deadly—for the first responders or for the veteran in crisis. Oftentimes veterans will only talk to another veteran during a crisis from a sense of commonality. The Veterans Response Team (VRT) Training teaches military veteran first responders, who are also CIT trained, how to effectively and peacefully resolve incidents involving a veteran in crisis. Officers learn to leverage their law enforcement training and their shared military experiences with the veteran in crisis to deescalate the event and prevent violence. Emphasis is placed on connecting veterans with locally available resources designed to improve the health and well-being of the veteran, unnecessary incarceration rates, and establishing a network of officers trained to respond to a veteran in crisis.

For more information about CITNJ please contact Edward Dobleman at edobleman@legacytreatment.org