Travis County Commissioners Court

July 31, 2012 - Item 6
Agenda

6 is review and approve requests regarding grant programs, applications, contracts and permissions to continue.
A, new application to the Texas veterans commission fund for assistance to expand services offered by the veterans court program to include substance abuse treatment.
Move approval.

>> Second.

>> Discussion on the motion?
All in favor?
That passes by unanimous vote.
6 b, new application to the center for effective public policy for a bureau of justice assistance grant to provide permanent supportive housing for chronicly homeless, mentally ill individuals and frequent offenders.
Comment or question?
Yes.

>> Our department and Travis County has been involved with a jail population management initiative.
It started out for the urban institute in February of 2009, and through our work with them, we've been able to dissect our jail population, figure what some of the drivers of the jail population have been.
One of the drivers of the jail population are frequent offenders, individuals who cycle in and out on a repeated basis of our jail.
An opportunity was made through the bureau of justice assistance to apply for fund to go address one of the drivers of our jail population.
We realize a lot of these individuals are homeless and one of the pieces that was miss to go try to address the issue was not only putting a roof over their head but also adding complimentary services to hopefully get these people off the street, out of our jails and successful.
So the application you see in front of you will go to the bureau of justice assistance.
It's seeking funding for a pilot program two years in duration, will serve approximately 23 individuals.
We are targeting homeless, mentally ill, chronic offenders who cycle in and out of our jail.
Anne howard, executive director of echo, has been intimately involved in this program and huge supporter and she's here to address the court.

>> We're excited to work together with criminal justice and the social service providers around housing some of the really most difficult citizens to house.
And this permanent supportive housing initiative as we've been talking about for about a year now, this is a critical piece.
We're going to work with the Travis County housing authority to provide the actual units and the vouchers to keep these folks housed and then wrap them with the services they need to stay in the community, whether that's health care for physical or mental health care treatment as well as maybe job training or education.
We're excited about this and this partnership with Travis County criminal justice planning has been good, sort of new to focus on housing with social service providers and we hope there's more of it.

>> Okay.

>> Move approval.

>> Second.
Commissioner Davis?

>> Thank you, judge.
And part of that component, mentioned several components to the critical need but not only the purpose of it but also part of that is the relationship that I think need to continue to be established with the persons relative, the family.
Sometimes those parts are still I think very vital, and I know that they are not going to be excluded, but coming in contact with your relatives or being in contact with relatives when possible I think is something also that is appropriate.
So and I know that what goes on in some of these particular instances, but relatives are very -- I think a very critical also part of some type of situation to make these persons whole as far as those other things that they had short comings in.

>> One of the key services, Commissioner that is correct will be offered through this program the if not the most vital is intensive case management where these individuals will be hooked up with a social worker to work with them.
And social workers will work on that family reunification and reestablishing the familial ties because we agree where these relationships are there and worth preserving, they need to be pursued.
That is definitely one of the activities the case manager will engage in.

>> Okay.
Thank you.

>> 23 sounds like a small number.

>> It is.

>> But if it's the chronically homeless, mentally ill individuals, it can have significant impact if we can --

>> We feel it can have an impact if the program can be sustained.
We're using models that are shown over a period of time the savings can go true and maybe not even savings as cost avoid answers.
We want to start out with a larger population, but we realized it's very difficult to get the housing part is very difficult to get for this population which is why we decided to approach it from a more conservative standpoint, look at a smaller, more servable population.
Then we can hopefully really demonstrate some results.

>> And it was a little piece here just the other day on television.
I can't remember what channel it was, but they talked about the situation in seminole county, florida.
And, of course, they -- the statistics are just overwhelming as far as homelessness was concerned and the outreach that they have looked into to try find ways of bringing resolve to the homeless population.
And it's really -- to really see that right in your face and it's right here also is kind of eye-opening experience when you look at these situations.
I really appreciate what you are doing, but it's real and it is in our face.
The point is what can we do about it as much as possible.

>> Right.
And we're eager to get this program off the ground because we know assistive permanent house ing is a strategy and we are eager to demonstrate it works right here in Travis County.
And as we're successful with this program, we believe it will encourage housing providers and, you know, service providers to really get on board.
I know you all just pored over the 1115 waiver possibilities and with criminal justice, health care reform, the time is right to do these projects you a brought up another good point and I have to kind of flush it out because we did provide and look at the matching funds from the federal government as far as the waiver that we looked at under hhs and looked at this whole area of the region.
But the money that we were required to put on the table at that time kind of a matching fund, if we put up a million they put 40 cents on the dollar, so in other words we put up a million and, of course, I was wondering how is that going to maybe intertwine some kind of way with some of the things that you are working in on this or is there a relationship with that working under the hhs commission, state of Texas level, and how that may reflect and filter back this way, especially federal dollars drawn down to -- to help us look at the entire picture, just parts and pieces of that puzzle of the picture.

>> I don't know the details in the plan you guys put together, but the potential is great because what can happen is those additional dollars can be used for the mental health services that this population so desperately needs.
We've been working with atcic on that and we're very hopeful.

>> I just want to make sure that relationship is right there in front of us whenever we come down and look at the time line of placing the money to that -- in fact was

>> [inaudible] dealing wit.
We need to make sure that all the pieces fit together.
As much as possible.

>> That's right.

>> Any more discussion on the motion?
All in favor?
That passes by unanimous vote.
Thank you all very much.

>> Thank you.

>> Now, in item 6 we also have c, d, e, f and g.
Does anybody have any questions or comments about any of those?

>> Move approval.

>> Second.

>> That's 6 c through 6 g.
Most of those are pretty routine.
There's a motion to approve and second by Commissioner Davis.
All in favor?
That passes by unanimous vote.

>> Thank you very much.

>> Thank you all.
We appreciate it.

The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.

July 3, 2012: Travis County Launches New Video Playback System

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On July 3rd, 2012, Travis County began leveraging free resources by posting Commissioners Court meetings on Youtube. Previously every video clip was edited separately and hosted on the county's video server. The old system also required RealPlayer to view the video clips.

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