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Jail Medical Contracting: Best Practices for Supporting Stepping Up Goals
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 will equip 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. Jail administrators, jail data analysts, and staff from jail medical and mental health providers are especially encouraged to attend this webinar. Read More
Jail Medical Contracting: Best Practices for Supporting Stepping Up Goals
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
Responding to Familiar Faces in Crisis Part 2: Engagement Challenges and Strategies
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
Stepping Up and Connections to Care: Making the Case with Data
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
Responding to People in Crisis Part 1: Identifying “Familiar Faces”
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
Launch of the Kansas Stepping Up Technical Assistance Center
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
How to Set Targets to Reduce the Number of People with Serious Mental Illness in Jails
Since its launch in 2015, more than 500 counties across 43 states have joined the Stepping Up initiative and worked to reduce the prevalence of mental illness in their jails. Stepping Up partners recently announced a new call to action—Set, Measure, Achieve—to support counties in setting targets to reduce the number of people with serious mental illnesses in their jails, measuring progress toward meeting these targets, and achieving results. As part of the new call to action, this webinar will explain how counties can obtain data to establish baselines for Stepping Up’s four key measures and set targets for reducing indicators of serious mental illness in jails. A representative from a county sheriff’s office will discuss the role of sheriffs in facilitating access to data on serious mental illness in jails. Speakers will also address specific challenges that can complicate counties’ efforts to identify accurate baseline data. IT staff from county sheriffs’ offices and county jails are encouraged to attend this webinar. Read More