Archive

Join the National Association of Counties (NACo) and your peers for a one-and-a-half-day peer exchange on county behavioral health and criminal justice issues, hosted in Polk County (Des Moines), Iowa. This event will bring together county leaders from across the country to visit Polk County and learn about its efforts to reduce the number of people with mental illnesses in the jail through the Stepping Up initiative and beyond. Participants will also engage in discussions about how to implement change in their own counties. Please see the draft agenda below. Read More

In Focus: Implementing Mental Health Screening and Assessment is a new brief from the Stepping Up partners designed to help counties identify the number of people booked into jails who have serious mental illnesses (SMI) and to better connect these individuals to treatment. Determining the number of people who have SMI in jails allows counties to develop or refine strategic plans that will have the greatest impact on addressing this population’s needs. Read More

The goal of this publication is to provide rural county leaders with ideas and strategies for addressing these challenges by providing examples of counties that have successfully done so or are making progress. There is no one strategy that will work for all counties, or all rural counties. But county leaders are encouraged to learn from each other’s experiences and adapt their peers’ policies, practices and programs to fit the needs of their county and residents. Read More

An extensive data analysis coupled with over 50 in-person interviews with stakeholders in Salt Lake County’s justice and behavioral health systems led to the identification of key recommendations improve outcomes for people involved with the county’s criminal justice system, particular those with behavioral health disorders. Read More

Across the country, county criminal justice, behavioral health, and social service system leaders are grappling with reducing the number of people with serious mental illness (SMI) in criminal justice systems, including county jails, often by using “front-end” strategies. Counties frequently struggle with using data to gauge the impact of these strategies on reducing the number of people with SMI in jails. One challenge for obtaining baseline data on SMI in jails centers on contracted private medical providers and their role in collecting and sharing data on SMI. This virtual discussion equips participants with knowledge about the role contracted medical providers have in either screening for SMI, assessing for SMI, or both; collecting and sharing data with jail administration and how contracts can support this process; and best practices for screening, assessment, and collecting and sharing data for contracts with third-party medical providers. Read More

Across the country, people in many jurisdictions who frequently encounter criminal justice, behavioral health, and social service systems are experiencing behavioral health crises and require different levels and intensities of services. This three-part series features three Stepping Up Innovator Counties that are also MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge sites. Representatives from these sites provide information on how to effectively serve and increase engagement with people who frequently cycle in and out of jails, emergency departments, homeless shelters, and other community-based settings. This session provides an overview of engagement challenges in service and treatment and strategies for how to work through them at both at the individual and systems levels. Read More

Counties across the country have made progress addressing the Stepping Up Four Key Measures. Yet counties often struggle with Key Measure 3: post-release connections to care for people who have a serious mental illness (SMI). This measure necessarily involves a handoff from the county jail system to the community-based behavioral health system, with implications for data collection and treatment initiation. This webinar features representatives from the Stepping Up initiative and Johnson County, Kansas, who will discuss the importance of tracking data on this key measure and how counties can set up systems to track this data accurately. Read More

Across the country, many jurisdictions find that some of the people who frequently encounter criminal justice, behavioral health, and social service systems are experiencing behavioral health crises and require different levels and intensity of services. Featuring three Stepping Up Innovator Counties that are also MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge sites, this series provides information on how to effectively serve and increase engagement with people who frequently cycle in and out of jails, emergency departments, homeless shelters, and other community-based settings. This first session provides an overview of how the sites identified these populations and explores their continuum of care for behavioral health crisis services. Read More

The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) and The Council of State Governments Justice Center (CSG Justice Center) announce the opening of the Kansas Stepping Up Technical Assistance Center (TA Center) to help counties reduce the prevalence of people with serious mental illness in jails. The TA Center—only the second of its kind in the nation—will offer technical assistance tailored specifically to Kansas counties to support policies and programs improving outcomes for people with mental illnesses and co-occurring substance use disorders in jails. Reinforced by support from the national Stepping Up initiative, this effort will be directly informed by local needs and guided by a leadership team of state and local representatives. This webinar introduced the TA Center and provided an overview of resources available to counties. The webinar also discussed how counties can sign up to be part of the TA Center and how they can get started on or advance the work of Stepping Up in their counties with support from the TA Center. Read More