Reentry Council 7/11

July's Reentry Council was moved back a week due to the July 4th holiday. Today's meeting focused quite a bit on the new bylaws and organization of the Reentry Council going forward. Bruce Barnard who regularly facilitates the meetings had his last meeting last month. His increased responsibilities and time obligations with his work at EIU appeared to be the main factor.

A large portion of the meeting was dedicated to a bit of organizational housekeeping for the year going forward. Annually selected co-chairs were nominated and approved: Claudia Lennhoff of Champaign County Health Care Consumers and Karee Voges, administrator of the Champaign County Jail. Bylaws of the Council were tentatively approved with some typo and grammatical corrections to be submitted. A few quick highlights:

• The Council organization fits certain paramaters required of grant funding rules.
   
• The Sheriff's Office would be represented as a single entity as opposed to with the Jail separate.
   
• The Executive Committee would consist of representatives from the Champaign County Mental Health Board, Rosecrance Central Illinois, Champaign County Sheriff's Office, and the Champaign County Health Care Consumers.
   
• Rules on voting members and voting proxies for representatives were discussed with a possible future amendment to the bylaws to make that easier for organizations.
   
• Task groups created by the Council would be run by Council representatives selected to chair them and start out under default rules of the Council.
   
• Executive Committee organizational details would be worked out by the Executive Committee.
   
• Invitations to Carle, OSF, Land of Lincoln, and the City of Champaign are being considered for representation on the Council. 

I had a quick question on guests, which in the bylaws were in the context of expertise, as opposed to local government observer such as myself. The bylaws were broad enough for the co-chairs to invite almost any guest and allow them discretion on space considerations, needs of the group, and appropriateness. The Designated Citizen Representative was brought up, but will be discussed in the Executive Committee and probably be aimed towards someone with a background in reentry issues.

The regular meeting items addressed before and after all the organizational issues covered the usual approval of the previous minutes and an introduction of Chris Gleason of Rosecrance who was new to the group and catching up with all of the introductions.

Tammy Bond of First Followers highlighted some of the upcoming events and work within the community including training and education opportunities. There's also an upcoming Expungement Summit (more information here). 2016 data from reentry surveys should be available on the First Followers website in the upcoming few weeks.

County Board Chair Pius Weibel noted the County Board's recent approval of the new Rosecrance contract (video of the vote and presentation at the County Board here and agenda here — page 2, item XVI B 1). Rosecrance noted in the Reentry Council meeting that this means they will be getting a new full time case manager who will be working with Becky Griffith's team at the jail, but not onsite at the jail. This is important due to the space limitations at the jail itself.

Other updates were pretty routine. Data on participants, screening, and services being used. The Mental Health Board representative noted that they've completed their work towards allocations and contracts moving forward. The Illinois Department of Corrections will be providing better access to data for people working in reentry. I didn't understand the specifics, but it sounded like a positive move that will help.

The Fair Housing Campaign was discussed with the upcoming presentation by First Followers to the City of Champaign on July 24th. The desired outcome being a study session where the details of removing the exemption to the Human Rights Ordinance could be examined in a way that would help ease the roadblocks faced by people reentering and trying to find housing or their inability to stay with family.

The Housing Authority's goals for reentry pilot programs would be less restrictive if Champaign mirrored Urbana's current housing rights law on the subject. The Reentry Council took a position for such a change in 2016 and recommended to remove the exemption then. The Council again agreed to support removing the exemption and will have representatives at the First Follower's presentation to the City of Champaign on July 24th.

Next month's meeting will likely be less organizational, though there will be some followup on the bylaws.