For the sliver of James Dunn’s tenants who have a mental illness, they don’t always have problems between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

A crisis can happen at all hours of the day.

“It has been more difficult on weekends, holidays,” said Dunn, a Lawrence landlord.

Now, an organization trained in helping to fill gaps in the needs of mentally ill residents is offering a helping hand to the Lawrence area.

The Mental Health Association of the Heartland, a Kansas City-area advocacy group, offered Wednesday to partner with local groups to determine how to provide more and better services for Lawrence’s mentally ill.

“We’re there to help fill in some of the gaps,” said Susan Crain-Lewis, the organization’s chief executive officer. “Let’s figure out how to get you what you need.”

The organization, which also provides mental health training for law enforcement and jail officers, was first invited to Lawrence by members of the Coalition for Homeless Concerns. The coalition voiced a need for more support services in the community, Crain-Lewis said.

Those needs can range from on-site peer support counselors living near a client with a mental illness, to helping with employment support to help recovering people get and keep jobs, Crain-Lewis said.

She said the organization doesn’t provide services typically funded by Medicaid dollars – crisis intervention or medications, for example – but can provide support to assist people in accessing such services, and to prevent crisis situations from occurring.

For example, a person having a 3 a.m. crisis will typically end up in the hands of law enforcement officers if the community mental health center, such as Bert Nash, is closed.

Instead, the group helps find federal or local funding to provide an on-site peer support counselor – someone to call if and when a resident with a mental illness feels a crisis coming on.

“A 24-hour program is about what’s going to be needed,” Dunn said. “That program, there’s a population who can thrive in that.”

The association runs similar peer support programs in Leavenworth and the Kansas City area, staffed in part by people who have recovered or are currently recovering from a mental illness.

The goal, Crain-Lewis said, was to offer ways that those with mental illness could recover and become integrated into the community.

Although Crain-Lewis said the organization currently doesn’t have direct funding to pay for these services, it does have staff in place to help Lawrence groups write grant proposals to fund these services themselves.

Officials from Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, the Douglas County Jail, the Coalition for Homeless Concerns and others heard a presentation Wednesday at the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vt., and expressed interest in the programs.

“All of the powers that be have talked, and yes, we will be back,” Crain-Lewis said.