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The Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) today announced new grants to help 7
communities build capacity to divert persons with mental illness from the
criminal justice system to community-based mental health and supportive services
such as health care, housing and job placement.
“Too
many people who need treatment for mental illness are being sent to correction
facilities instead,” SAMHSA Administrator Charles Curie explained. “ These
new grantees will be using state-of- the-art community-based mental health
services including case management, assertive community treatment, medications
management and access, integrated mental health and co-occurring substance abuse
treatment, and psychiatric rehabilitation to approach mental illness as the
medical concern that it is.”
The new grant program
will provide each community with approximately $300,000 per year for a
total of three years for development of diversion programs for people with
mental illness. As part of the award criteria, each recipient was required to
provide a 25 percent non-federal match in funds or in-kind items for the
program.
Capacity development grantees
are:
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Connecticut Department
of Mental Health and Addiction Services, New Britain/Bristol
Women’s Treatment and Support Diversion Program – $300,000 – to
implement a model jail diversion program that will facilitate recovery
through gender-specific and culturally appropriate outreach, case management
and trauma treatment services for women with co-occurring mental health and
substance use disorders.
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Florida Department of
Children and Families, The Jail Diversion Program – $299,763– to
expand existing programs to include county wide crisis intervention training
for all police agencies and to improve the case management system to provide
better aftercare and treatment for the diverted population
.
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Community Health Center,
Lancaster County, NE, Jail Diversion Capacity Expansion – $300,000 –
to facilitate treatment engagement for adults with a serious mental illness
or co-occurring substance abuse disorder, who are in jail for non-violent,
misdemeanor crimes or who have had multiple law enforcement contacts in the
community.
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Center for Health Care
Services, Bexar County, TX, Sano y Salvo program – $300,000 – to
provide community-based, easily-accessed resources to wrap around project
services to create an encompassing support system for persons with mental
illness and co-occurring disorders.
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Shelby County, TN, Jail
Diversion for Individuals with Mental Health and Co-Occurring Disorder
– $299,769 – to build on the Mayor’s Jail Mental Health Network to
address the county’s greatest infrastructure gap in jail diversion for
consumers with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.
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Community Care
Alternatives of Anchorage, AK – $278,861 – to divert
individuals with a major mental illness who have committed non-violent
misdemeanors from the criminal justice system into appropriate
community-based services.
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Jackson County
(Independence), Missouri Health Department – $299,763 – to provide
project management to law enforcement crisis intervention teams trained to
respond to crisis calls from persons with mental illness.
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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a public health agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the lead federal agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment and
mental health services in the United States. Information on SAMHSA's programs is available on
this website, www.samhsa.gov.
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