Webinar: Co-occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Illness Grants

The National Reentry Resource Center will host a webinar about responding to the Second Chance Act Co-Occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Illness Grant Program Solicitation on Thursday, May 24 from 11:00 am – 12:30 pm. In this webinar, representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Reentry Resource Center will review the FY18 Improving Reentry for Adults with Co-occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Illness application process.

This grant program will provide awards of up to $750,000 for a 36-month project period to states, units of local governments, federally recognized Indian tribal governments, and state-county authorized mental health authorities. Applicants must apply within one of three categories, depending upon their jurisdictional status. To register for the webinar and additional information, please click here.

Stepping Up Initiative Four Key Measures Webinar

The next series of Stepping Up webinars will focus on providing counties with the tools they need to collect accurate data on each of these measures and use this data to inform policy and practice decisions to impact them. Join Stepping Up for the first webinar in the Four Key Measures series, which will provide an overview of each of the measures, describe strategies for reducing the number of people with mental illnesses who are booked into jails, and outline key data points to collect, analyze, and track measures of success. The webinar will be held on Thursday, June 7 from 11:00 am – 12:15 pm. For additional information and to register for the webinar, please click here.

AOJ Bill of Interest

SB 1303 (Pan): This bill, as amended, would require that six non-charter counties with a population greater than 500,000 separate the office of sheriff-coroner and establish a new medical examiner office. Currently, county boards of supervisors have the statutory power to do this. SB 1303 would have significant fiscal impacts on the larger counties by requiring them to create the new office and would put forensic pathologists in the role of administrator instead of performing exams.

Ultimately, SB 1303 would remove a county’s local control to decide how to organize their sheriff coroner operations and could result in unnecessary upheaval in counties. SB 1303 is on Suspense in the Senate Appropriations Committee and is set to be taken up on May 25. CSAC and UCC are opposed to SB 1303.