The Fifth Judicial District will be able to purchase more services for its adult community corrections clients because of a $71,000 Edward Byrnes Memorial Justice Assistance Grant awarded this month from the federal government.
The money will help supplement an approximately 26 percent loss of funding that resulted from budget cuts this year by the Kansas Legislature. The districts two local providers — the Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas and Corner House — were notified on June 1 that there would be a 26 percent decrease in financing for indigent clients in Fiscal Year 2010, according to the application submitted for the grant.
Corner House, the largest treatment provider, estimated that 50 to 65 people would not be served as a result of the 26 percent cut. The mental health center estimated that at least 20 people would not be served because of the cuts.
The $71,000 will provide treatment for about 20 people, based on the government’s estimate of a $3,354 annual cost for treating each offender.
The award announced this month will be used to provide services to people who have no insurance or who are underinsured.
“So most of them are probably going to be Drug Court (clients),” said Robert Sullivan, executive director of community corrections for the district, which includes Lyon and Chase counties. Other adult community corrections clients also will benefit from the funds.
“The target population is adult offenders assigned to community corrections,” he said. “The majority of that population will probably be assigned to Drug Court,” but Drug Court will not be a prerequisite for using grant funds.
Community Corrections officers, mental health services, law enforcement and others work together to monitor clients as they progress through the system. A mental health center counselor, for example, has an office in the community corrections complex in the basement of the Lyon County Courthouse. The proximity allows the counselor, probation officers and law enforcement to consult about meetings and progress made by individual offenders.
Community Corrections also employs a sheriff’s deputy and a high-risk officer to go to the homes, workplaces and schools of offenders to bring in information from different environments; they also talk with neighbors and friends who may have information that gives a fuller picture of an offender’s progress, or lack of progress, as that individual works his or her way through the system to a release from probation.
“This is just one little slice of our collaboration with other treatment providers,” Sullivan said.
As a result of that collaboration, the Fifth District’s probation revocation rate is only 15 percent, a figure that is significantly lower than rates in other areas.
“We feel like it’s been really successful,” he said.
Lyon County offenders make up approximately 89 percent of the Fifth District’s total offender population; the remaining 11 percent consists of 2 percent Chase County cases and 9 percent are people who transfer in from other counties.
The district’s Department of Community Corrections serves an average daily population of 124 felony offenders, the application stated.
The services include drug and alcohol evaluations as well as treatments, and should help defray expenses for the service providers.
The mental health center had considered discontinuing its drug and alcohol abuse program because of its high caseload of uninsured and underinsuranced substance abuse clients, the grant stated. Newman Regional Health’s Recovery Road program, one of the founding members of the local drug court program, had closed earlier this year, which funneled additional clients into the mental health center.
“But because such a closure would have left a gaping and irreparable hole in the public safety net for substance abuse treatment for the indigent and the uninsured, the mental health center has decided to continue services at the same level they have been for several years,” the grant application stated.
Other programs can reserve the right to determine which clients they will work with; the mental health center does not.
“At best, they hope to break even each year,” Sullivan said. “They are kind of a safety net provider.”
The $71,000 used to pay for treatment for adult offenders will, in its own way, benefit non-offenders who also are uninsured or underinsured.
“Then that saves more funds for the regular Joe on the street to receive treatment,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan and his staff need to write a detailed process to handle the money, create records and meet other grant requirements before the program can be implemented.
“We’re hoping to have this up and running by the end of September, beginning of October,” he said.
The funding will end on June 30, 2010.