Travis County Commissioners Court
May 17, 2005
Item 5
Now we did indicate that we thought we would reach an item at about 3:00. That's number 5. Consider and take appropriate action on request to file grant application to the department of health and human services, substance abuse and mental health senior advises administration for a targeted capacity expansion grant for jail diverse programs in the sheriff's office.
>> good afternoon. First of all, I want to thank the Commissioners court for having the sheriff's department and its partners to come and talk about this grant. The grant that we are applying for today from the substance abuse and mental health services administration is one that I believe will help to move our community towards the goal of more appropriately treating people with mental illnesses inside and outside the jail system. This grant is designed to allow us eight months of planning to target and carefully examine how jail diversion should be implemented through best practices in Travis County. Bexar county was the recipient of this same three-year grant and now it has established a program that is considered a model by Travis County and other Texas counties. Strategically, this is a good way to leverage Travis County, Austin-Travis County mental health, mental retardation and federal dollars to design a system that will be able to more appropriately treat Travis County citizens in better therapeutic settings. Recently we found an electronic exchange of information with Austin-Travis County mhmr that 31% of the people booked that day had previous contact with mhmr statewide system. With the initial planning efforts that have begun, we believe that we have already made a positive impact on changing the way mentally ill citizens are handled by the justice system in this community. To date we have collaborated with many different segments of the justice system and the treatment community and we look forward to expanding the collaboration to all parts of the community. The decision to go forward with this grant is in such a short time frame was seen as an opportunity to capture federal dollars at a time the court had made the commitment in the f.y. '06 budget to prioritize mental health and substance abuse. The letters of support demonstrate a broad base of community support and commitment by key stakeholders to change the way that mentally ill persons are handled by the justice system. And you all have a list of the letters. There's over probably 25 letters that were sent in supporting this particular grant as far as us getting it. Today I have several members of this partnership. And I think it's critical that if we are going to address the issue of mental health, I know that it's bigger than the sheriff's department, it's bigger than Austin-Travis County mhmr, it's bigger than the judicial system. So we've partnered up and these are just some of our partners that we have. And I’m going to allow them to tell you what we have been doing. We've been -- one of the things i'd like to say is we've been meeting probably about two months trying to come up with some type of diversion plan to address mental health issues. And I want to allow these individuals to give you a perspective from the law enforcement end, from the jail end, from the treatment side, and the judicial side. We'll start off with captain darrin lowe.
>> hello. I’m currently one of the supervisors over the crisis intervention team formerly known as the mental health unit. We have fine full-time officers that they respond to persons in mental health crisis. When I got into this business two or three years ago, I was told that here in a couple of years the state will be in a crisis situation as far as funding and shortfalls of resources in the community. And lo and behold it's true. On a daily basis our jail holds more people than the Austin state hospital for mental disabilities. Our officers are the one that have to go out there and pick up these people that are in mental crisis. And right now with the lack of resources that the state provides and the community provides, there's little alternatives for police officers to take people. Especially if they are intoxicated. Central booking is the only place you can take someone that is mentally ill and intoxicated. Austin state hospital can't take them because they can't evaluate them. P.s. Can't take them because of the intoxicated state. Therefore it falls upon law enforcement and the jail system to take care of these folks because of lack of resources in the community. I believe this application for this grant is the first step in us taking steps to bridge the gaps that -- and the shortfalls because of the cutbacks statewide. I just got back from the first annual -- I mean crisis intervention team and mental health diverse conversation in columbus, ohio last week. This is not just a problem in Texas. It's in every state across the nation. And every one of them have jail diversion programs that they are submit to go their local governments, Commissioners court, city councils because they know they have to pick up the slack and there is no alternatives for police officers right now besides working together with people like david evans, carl sharp with Austin state hospital, and coming up with things we can do together collectively. And I believe locally this is one of the first steps we can take in that direction.
>> david blade, sheriff's office corrections bureau. I just wanted a couple of real quick words and wanted to kind of focus on some of the things the sheriff has actually already briefly spoke about and those are the collaborative effort that -- us and a whole bunch of other folks have gotten together and come together and we have already had some successes and it's been a very, very good joint venture that we have started. But like darrin says, this is a really good first step that we're trying to take. Mhmr does a wonderful job given their resources. We in the jail do a great job given our resources. And especially considering that if you look back, we'll just go with -- let's go with my career. If you look back 25 years ago, when I started in the jail, this wasn't a mission. This was not a mission of the jail to treat the mentally ill. It was not. And it is now. It's one of our core missions now. And we do it very well. And when you talk about treatment of these individuals in-house, so to speak, we do an excellent job in the jail. You can look at us as being a best practice. But we're not a therapeutic type of community. We're a jail. And there is different types of diversion and that's what we're trying to get at. There's diversion at the front door and there's a lot of that going on right now and it's working well. There needs to be more of it. But there's also a segment of the population that will come to jail. And they need to come to jail. But there also needs to be diversion then for them when they leave the jail and a place for them to go and to be treated. And so this is an excellent first step to have what's needed to do a true jail diversion and that is to have somewhere to go when it's time for the people to leave. So this is an excellent step, and like I say, we've already had some successes working with all of our partners and especially with mhmr. We've bridged a lot of those gaps and we are the -- the collaboration and community is excellent and it's only going to get better.
>> david evans.
>> david evans from mhmr. Mr. Hamilton asking the work group to the a brief period of time, but a very deep look at improving the system of care, in particular around jail diversion. This federal granting source is the same place in the federal government that the children's partnership was funded in Travis County, which has been a successful collaboration. Also this has been a grant that in other locations in the country has yielded successful out come that of providing treatment as an alternative for incarceration t treatment piece in this is an intensive wrap-around case management system. While the case management ratios are low, one to ten, it bridges across the need for housing, supportive employment, medications, treatment, working with the criminal justice system and where things have been new silos, this actually spans across the team of individuals working with a group of individuals in this alternative treatment array. Also it provides for training, for expertise. We're fortunate to have a national expert available to us as part of the implementation in this grant. The grant itself envisions that the mhmr center under an interlocal agreement which has a continuous mission or an overlapping mission with county government to be able to do this implementation of the treatment piece. Also the mhmr center will be making financial contributions into the match required for the federal government. My only apology is for the brief period of time that you've had a chance to review this, and we had a very condensed, maybe six-week period of time to assemble this particular grant request. However, you will see and as the sheriff referenced, the number of individuals writing letters of support that there's a tipping point that already there for many people to work on the success of this type endeavor. We thank you today for your consideration on this grant request. [inaudible].
>> do we have the possibility if indeed we get this grant that mhmr would assist us with the $100,000 match?
>> yes.
>> do we know what piece of that? Half? Okay. Because that's helpful to know. It's 125. So the grant is for 500,000, not 4? Okay.
>> also next we have from our judiciary, they are so excited about this and truly believe in this they closed down the court today. No, I’m just kidding. But we have judge crane and judge hohenguard here to speak.
>> david crane, county court at law number 3. I very much support the application for this grant and would be very proud and excited to work with partners with mhmr and the sheriff's department to move forward in continuing the initiatives that we've done so far. You know, when we started or when I personally started working on these types of issues a couple years ago, one of the real problems was -- seemed to be that we had very little communication between the knowledge that was gained down in the sheriff's department and when we got to our part of the puzzle, we didn't know what they know. And in working together in the last couple of years, we've come to communicate a little bit better and we know a little bit more about what they know and we know how to communicate with them and it fits us. So you've got the intake where law enforcement brings them in and when they are being held in the sheriff's department and in court and then when we release them, and in between each one of these places, transition is important. And I believe if we have somebody who can look holisticly at the process and make decisions how to improve each one of those areas, we can have even greater success. And I think the planning has been piecemeal and everybody is doing their little part and we don't always match up and we can't always agree as to how to hand the ball off. So I think an overall holistic planning process would be not only appropriate but it would assist everybody in moving forward on what I think everybody agrees jointly is our same goals.
>> yes, sir, because I want to get all of my time too.
>> move approval. I think you got your volts.
>> no, we'll be quiet.
>> > all in favor in that passes by unanimous vote. Looking forward to partnering with you. Sorry to be short on that is correct but you all came at the right time when we're short of
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 18, 2005 7:54 AM