I’m excited to report that we are making good progress on the Diversion Pilot.We continue to engage with key stakeholders that will work in conjunction with the Pilot, ( TSCO, APD, the County Attorney’s office, public defenders, and the courts). We have received both positive and constructive feedback that we’re incorporating into the pilot design. We plan on requesting an agenda item in the coming weeks to provide a full briefing to the Court. Recent highlights to note: 1) Just yesterday, the City included $2M in their FY2024 for the diversion pilot, which was our request. The pilot has wide support among the Council Members. We are also having productive conversations with Central Health and Ascension Seton, and I am optimistic one or both of these organizations will contribute to the Pilot. Also, we are in talks with ECHO about aligning housing resources.2) HHS staff will be sending you a concept memo providing a draft outline of the pilot design, as well as 2 Integral Care grant applications to the State HHSC, which have the potential to bring in a $10M over 2 years to help fund the Pilot. Both the memo and applications are based on work that County HHS and JPS staff have done in close partnership with Integral Care, and my and Judge Brown’s office, and informed by many stakeholder conversations. As a reminder, the goals and realities associated with the Pilot:1. Aligned with the Strakowski recommendations, the goal of the pilot is to better utilize existing community assets to improve our existing forensic mental health system.2. Our community has some big gaps that we need to fill to build out the diversion system we want and need. The Pilot will not be able to solve all of our diversion needs but can meaningfully move the ball forward to improve the ecosystem of diversion-related services, which will ready us for the new Diversion Center. I look forward to sharing more about the progress we’re making in an upcoming Court meeting. Thank you all for your support on this very important community need.
Ann
