Shortfall challenges jail diversion program

About two-thirds of jail diversion participants have avoided jail time.
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
LISBON -- The Mental Health and Recovery Services Board will have to fund its successful jail diversion program while faced with the loss of an additional $447,000.
Kathie Chaffee, the board's associate director, said the mental health board operates the jail diversion program through The Counseling Center and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
The board has received about $46,000 per year from the Ohio Department of Mental Health to run the program, Chaffee said. For Fiscal Year 2006, however, which ends June 30, 2006, the Ohio Department of Mental Health gave the county about $22,000 for the jail diversion program and advised county mental health officials not to expect any funding for the program in FY 2007, which begins the next day.
Chaffee said the mental health board also stands to lose $447,000 annually from its budget this year unless voters change their minds about the mental health levy they defeated in November. The board has to decide if and when to put the 0.3-mill levy before voters again. She hopes the board will decide to put the levy on the ballot in May or November 2006.
The tax revenue is needed to maintain the mental health board's current level of services -- including helping to fund the jail diversion program -- and would also enable the board to provide inpatient psychiatric treatment to low-income adults, a service the board buys from hospitals outside Columbiana County, Chaffee said.
The tax as proposed in November would cost the owner of a home valued at $80,000 about $12.62 per year.
Provides alternative
Chaffee said the jail diversion program gives people with severe, persistent mental illness who are charged with nonviolent crimes the option of mental health counseling and probation instead of jail time. She said the program has lived up to its name because about two-thirds of participants have not been sentenced to jail.
Doctors, nurses, counselors and caseworkers are assigned to jail diversion participants to both help them with mental health issues such as attending counseling and taking any needed medications, she said. Counselors and caseworkers also have a dual role as secondary probation officers, assisting jail diversion participants so they understand and comply with the specific rules of their probation, she said.
She emphasized that people who have exhibited threatening behavior or committed violent crimes as a result of mental illness are not eligible for the jail diversion program.
tullis@vindy.com