Sunday, December 3, 2017

Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program Report

Last week there was a meeting on Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program to present information to the public about their work and report. I was unable to attend at the last minute, but wanted to put together a post and resource for those who may find the information valuable and helpful.

Quick Links:

Summary, Guide and Links:

First of all what is it? A concise statement from the report:
In 2015, Champaign County was awarded a Justice and Mental Health Collaboration grant to pursue a coordinated planning process to analyze criminal justice needs for the justice involved population with mental health and co-occurring mental health and substance use needs.
The report, available here, details the work, the people and organizations involved, data and recommendations. It is rich in information, but Claudia Lennhoff of the Champaign County Health Care Consumers offered this guide to peruse both the power point presentation from the public meeting, available here, and the report (linked again below):
Here are a few things I would like to point out:

- It's really important to understand two things about this grant-funded project:  a) the purpose is to help communities develop collaborative approaches to reducing the prevalence of individuals with mental health disorders in the jails (so, focuses on people with mental illness and their interactions with the justice system); and b) it is a planning grant - the purpose is to support the community in going through its planning process. It is not an implementation grant. In order for communities to know what solutions they want to pursue, they have to first make sure they understand the problem, and then plan for the solutions accordingly. In other words, this grant is to provide support for the first step of this community process.

- Page 6 of powerpoint tells of some of our activities. I just want to point out that some of our Focus Groups and Surveys were conducted with people currently incarcerated at the time, as well as recently released people and other populations and the community.

- Also Page 6 - the bullet point that says we Established validated screenings in the jail at booking. This is a major accomplishment that would not have been possible without the Sheriff's Office and their jail staff. What this means is that when people are booked into jail, officers involved in the booking now screen the people being booked for two things: a) mental health issues, and b) substance abuse issues. We are one of the only counties in the country that has actually been able to implement this. The reason this is so important is because it will help us get data, in terms of giving us a sense of what proportion of the people being booked might have these problems, and also because it allows the staff in the jail to refer the people who screen positive so that they can get an evaluation by a professional, and link up with appropriate services (both inside the jail and outside) as needed.

- Also Page 6 - the last bullet about Conduct a data-driven analysis. This follows from the previous point -- if we are to identify solutions or propose solutions, they need to be based on a fact- and data-based definition of the problem. We have scarce resources and we need to use them appropriately and carefully to meet these human needs.

- Page 7 shows you the 4 key measures that we used in carrying out this planning process.

- Page 8 shows the Sequential Intercept Map (more detail on that below)

- Page 9 - 12 are our recommendations to the community.

Regarding data - Page 12,13, and 14 of the Final Report has data related to the various points in the Sequential Intercept Map, if you want to take a look at the data:
http://www.co.champaign.il.us/Sheriff/pdf/JMHCP_Planning_Phase_Final_Report.pdf
The report was also presented to the Champaign County Board at the November 14, 2017 Committee of the Whole meeting (the six and half hour long marathon one). Video with a direct link jumping to this report as opposed to the full meeting is here.

I'm not an expert on this material, but page two of the report should have plenty of contacts for those involved from law enforcement, to advocacy, etc to google and ask depending on what information you're looking for.

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