Travis County Commissioners Court
January 30, 2007
Item 15
15. Consider and take appropriate action on a request to restructure the commitment to change program.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners. I'm the director of educational services as well as interim developmental justice coordination. Next to me is kimberly pierce. Manager for criminal justice planning. To ask the court to consider and take action on a request to change some of the commitment, the restructuring of it. Just to do a quick overview of the commitment to change program. It's a reentry program held at the travis state jail for men and both criminal justice planning and ces or overseeing it. We have been running it for approximately 18 months now. The men attend a substance abuse curriculum for six months prerelease, once they have completed that successfully and they are released there's a 90 day after care component. And they receive case management as well as -- they have family therapy and also I forgot to say prerelease, more than substance abuse, family counseling, parenting classes, anger management and some of that -- the family therapy is continued once they are out with their families in the community as well as the county helps to pay for part of their transitional housing while they are paying for part of it with their job. They are helped to get a job and then we also after that 90 days is up, we are also keeping in contact for another 90 days just to see how they are doing. In the past 18 months, we have started 83 men in the program, 41 completed phase one and two prerelease. There are 35 men that are currently active with 16 of them out in the community. Just fairly recently we've had several changes with our staff and contracts for people that provide some of these services. And kimberly has a list of these changes and recommendations that we would like to make to the court.
>> good afternoon. What carroll was mentioning today we would really like guidance from the court on two issues surrounding this program. One is post release case management and the other is finally being able to serve the females at the woodman state jail in gatesville. First I would like to discuss the post release case management. Cjp terminated our contract with the new entry at the end of last month where the post release case management services for this population. What we decided to do is a -- as a management team is our planner in criminal justice planning is now taking on those job duties. He's doing a really good job. What we wanted to do is ensure that 40 hours a week was being spent with these men once returning back into our community. That's something that we were not receiving the contract that we had with the new entry. When we took over these services at the beginning of the year, we -- cjp did not have appropriate line items within our budget in order to provide the basic needs assistance that carol was talking about, the transitional housing, let's see, clothing is another thing that we need a line item for. Bus passes or transportation assistance and basic hygiene materials, once someone is released from prison, no shampoo, conditioner, things of that nature. So one of the things that we would like to ask from the court today is to give cjp the appropriate line items so that we can be able to purchase this material for these men that are being released because this post that has been very difficult in this transition, not only for staff, but also for the men that we are serving.
>> do you have an estimate of what the cost it -- would be for that?
>> I have it broken down Commissioner.
>> just in general just ballpark. I'm not looking for that specific, just ballpark.
>> would you like them for each client or just -- for instance for each client up to $100 is given for basic needs assistance and that could include clothing, maybe they nccd tools for work. Bus passes, things that I just mentioned so that it's $100 a person. Up to $462 for 90 day housing assistance is also available. If these men, thousand these women that are going to be going through the program. If the men are successful after the 90 days of after care, they are also eligible for a $250 stipend. Does that answer your question, sir?
>> yes. Just wanted that information disclosed
>> [multiple voices] right.
>> up to that amount of money.
>> each line item.
>> yes, sir.
>> each line item has a budgeted amount.
>> yes, sir.
>> if we look on page 2 of the second page 2 in the backup, are those the amounts that you would like to put in different line items.
>> yes, sir.
>> p.b.o. Can do this for you?
>> yes, sir. We have been in conversations with -- we've had to have the court's approval. One of the other things that I forgot to mention was a line item for food. This is really for after care, two times a week, we have after care available for these men and women up to $20 for each session so they can purchase coffee and cookies things of that nature when they are in their education they are following up with their after care.
>> this money has been budgeted.
>> yes, sir it has.
>> it has just been the line item for the contractor.
>> right.
>> since we terminated that contract, you are asking if the line items be in cjp and accessed as needed basically.
>> yes.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> this is just one part of it.
>> yes, sir.
>> can you tell me about the job readiness aspect of that? I'm really kind of as far as --
>> why don't we vote on this, we will move right to that. This is just on the line items.
>> judge, yes.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Now then.
>> okay. There's one other thing that I wanted to mention to the court also about this program just one second Commissioner, I will answer your question. The females at the woodman state jail. Staff went up there past Friday, we met with the warden, 28 females that were eligible coming home to Travis County. All 28 of the females volunteered for the program, which we don't see 100% participation with the male population. Every single one of them good with the exception I'm sorry of two also had children underneath the age of 18, which is one of the big things that we -- when we started creating this program for the parenting classes. So really management we have been talking for several months how we would be able to serve this population. One of the options was bringing the women to Austin. Having tdcj bus these females here. The amount of time these females would be in the van every day. Two hours here, back up there. Four hours of the day. Plus tdc's van can only hold 10 people at a time. So it limits the number of people that we can serve. When we pulled the -- pooled the numbers to see how many people were coming back to Travis County or how many Travis County females were incarcerated there. I believe we had 58 or so females eligible for the program. What we would like to do is discuss with the court today. We have an f.t.e. Available for the ctc program that is vacant. Carol since that position is in her shop I would like her to talk about that. We would like to discuss with the court having this f.t.e. Actually housed at the gatesville, women's state jail like we have staff housed here except it's in Austin. Ces oversees the counselors, that provide the curriculum. Licensed counselors. We had a really good one that was doing family therapy for the men here, but just before the holidays I believe she resigned. So we have an open f.t.e. And in looking at the best way to serve the women, once we realized that we can serve three times as many if we go to them rather than have them come to us, we would like to, you know, request from the court permission to hire a full-time f.t.e., but they would actually be housed at gatesville. We have been in, you know, conversation with h.r. And, you know, various people, but it's basically just come to court and talk about it. What we have decided is to put like about 80% of the time up there, 20% here. Which means they would come down here approximately once a week. We need to see what works, if it's going to be once a week or once every other week. Also we will have enough people involved to send someone up there once a week. We are trying to see what money we could move into mileage with this travelling, we feel like we do have enough to do this. The women would be better served. Also I believe the warden was clear she really would rather have us come do the program in her jail. But these are Travis County women. That will be returning here. We would like to modify the program somewhat, but we would do probably a shortened version of the substance abuse program. But we have talked with dr. Milkman who created that curriculum. He says each phase can be done separately. That would be fine. When they get down here, we would do more, just have more after care groups with them. More family counseling with them. To try to, you know, work with them and their families once they are in Travis County. I'm trying to think of some other things much we have talked about just different things with supervision, you know, that we could do a lot with electronics. We have all of our data in a system here with Travis County so that would just be sent down here. We would keep all of that. And when staff went up last Friday and talked with the warden. Currently up there that they thought might be interested. We have also looked at a variety of -- of programs that are in that area that have people that might be interested. So we are feeling like we would actually have a pretty good pool to interview.
>> that person would work out of gatesville.
>> about 80% of the time.
>> how far is that from here.
>> about 150 miles.
>> two hours trip.
>> takes a couple of hours to get up there.
>> we are not speeding 2.5 hours.
>> whatever we do, we ought to do it on a pilot basis. Come back to court, let you know how it's going. It's one thing to commit and participate in a program when you get news of the availability, another thing to actually participate. We would want to see that. If they are coming back, don't wait for us to get around to dealing with them. If we are providing the same or similar services to men and the women were here initially but taken out because of problems that surfaced, so in fairness I do think we ought to have the same services available at the same time I think we would like to be comfortable with the nature of the investment and the likelihood of positive return, right?
>> uh-huh.
>> so your commitment really is if we put the pilot program in place, we will get a 90 day report, see how it's working. We are using the same money that's already budgeted.
>> that's correct.
>> and you all had I guess agreed with the warden that it makes a lot more sense for us to have a counselor there than to try to transport these female confinees basically back and forth. Daily almost, huh.
>> you can't get enough -- you can I guess but it's all travel time.
>> it's really -- but it really limits the number of people that you can serve. I really didn't see the point in spending that amount of money with that little --
>> we have enough transportation issues ourselves getting people from del valle down to our court system. We know not to volunteer to
>> [indiscernible] vans.
>> the f.t.e. We would be looking for for the gatesville project, are we looking for someone who resides in gatesville or someone who will travel? We are looking for an msw.
>> or lcdc, licensed professional counselor. We were thinking someone who actually lives there, since 80% of their time spent there. If we could find someone willing to do that, that would be great. We don't have a lot of hope that we could do so.
>> if you are talking about waco, temple the surrounding area, we have discussed posting it in waco's paper.
>> and temple.
>> would there be benefit, spinning out ideas here, a benefit to having someone who would be willing to do the commute so has they could also plug them into services here, they would have more of the knowledge of the service availability in the Travis County region?
>> well, another portion of this kimberly I don't think we really speak about, with some of the contract money that we were using for case management, what we wanted to do was also hire a part-time case manager and then a part-time family therapist to fill those slots. Now, we do have the planner and cjp doing case management. But with the women we are going to need, we feel like another .5, we would like to hire part time people just up to 20 hours a week and use them as needed. So we would have an additional case management person to help with the women. Is the way that we are looking at it.
>> to help with that reintegration once they do return to Travis County?
>> right, uh-huh, exactly. We would be pretty focused on the women, travelling up there, as well as knowing all of the resources here.
>> 4 to 5 hours a day travelling is a lot of money that you could spend counseling.
>> yes, sir.
>> confinees. If it was once a week I guess that I could see it. But we need this person there you said at least four days a week, right if.
>> right.
>> maybe five.
>> uh-huh.
>> hopefully
>> [indiscernible] hopefully I'm just -- we look at all of this, initiate all of these efforts. The bottom line is that we are really trying to ensure whatever these needs are, are being met and that the needs are being met. But not only that, that -- that -- I looked at the job aheadness thing and I'm really concerned about that because the bottom line we don't want to see these folks at all returned to the criminal justice system. And I think if these are some measures that -- that we are looking at to have in place, I think it's very, very critical and I'm really concerned about the job readiness and also tracking of the number of employers that have actually hired with the -- with the persons that participate in this program. And because I think that's a real good start of -- of doing some things, positively, to ensure that -- that you are not going to return back into the situation which you were in. I think that's something that we can -- that persons go to and claim and be a productive person. Whereby not return to the criminal justice system.
>> there's two things to discuss. One is that there is job readiness training or that's a component of the ctc program. The post release case manager, he or she are responsible for making sure these folks are working, if not getting them jobs, going out into the community trying to solicit employers. Secondly the money allocated for cjp, we are on the fast track with that, making a short list of the applicants, judge Biscoe and I are going to meet Thursday to talk more about that. We are moving in the right direction, though.
>> okay. Well, I know that we are focusing, you know, funding for a lot of these workforce development efforts. But as far as this we are going to ask other employers to -- to look at these folks and -- with sincerity, in seriousness as far as hiring them, Travis County in my mind has done the same thing. Of course that's something that I think we need to work toward and work on. So that's why I brought that part up about the job readiness, the job preparation, also the job acquisition retention and all of these other kind of things. Something that I think we can measure in the long run.
>> am leisure I can't was talk -- alicia was talking to me about jobs and facilities management.
>> good news to my ears. Thank you. Move approval of the recommended --
>> second.
>> for the women confinees in gatesville. For the commitment of a 90 day follow-up.
>> yes.
>> I hear the court saying I think that a -- I think it's best to pursue a person who can spend optimal time in gatesville otherwise I think that -- we reduce the chance of success. We may end up hiring the best person from whoever -- from whatever area the person is from. As well as there's an understanding of the job and a commitment of the delivery.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Anything else today? And we cut you off before the workforce development angle, Commissioner Davis?
>> no. That was basically it, judge, in a nutshell. Emphasize using those funds to justify the
>> [indiscernible] I'm really looking forward to that. Anything else, thank you all very much. Thank for you your patience.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 31, 2007 6:55 AM