Albany County launches care team program with law enforcement partners

Albany County is launching a care team program that brings the sheriff’s office, the City of Laramie Police Department, the University of Wyoming Police Department and Volunteers of America Northern Rockies into one response to mental-health crisis calls.

The arrangement is spelled out in a memorandum of understanding filed in City of Laramie agenda materials under the Albany County Care Team Program. The agreement names the County of Albany, Wyoming, through its Board of Commissioners, as a party, making the effort a countywide partnership rather than a single-agency project.

The program sits inside a broader behavioral-health network that includes outpatient and residential options, a gatekeeping program tied to Title 25 detentions, and co-responder and CIT training. Those elements were described alongside the Albany Care Team, or ACT, program in local government meeting materials, giving the new partnership a clear connection to crisis response and treatment access.

VOA Northern Rockies says it provides counseling and psychiatric services at nine locations across eastern Wyoming. The nonprofit describes its mission this way: “We serve to harness hope and re-shape futures through a faith-based ministry.”

For Albany County, the practical issue is not the name of the partnership but what it changes on the ground. The same county that includes Laramie and the University of Wyoming now has its sheriff’s office, city police, university police and VOA tied together in one formal agreement, creating a shared path for people who enter the system through a crisis call. If the program works as intended, the next step after an officer, deputy or campus police contact will be closer coordination with the care side of the system, including counseling, psychiatry and the county’s existing mental-health response structure.