FAQ

The start date of the grant is indicated by the date included in the award notification document, where it can be found in box number 6.

However, some award letters include a special condition prohibiting you from spending any money pending an approval of your budget. You will then receive notification from the Bureau of Justice Assistance indicating that your budget has been approved.

If you will not be able to complete the work described in your application within the time period provided, you should request a no cost extension. Project period extension requests are made by submitting a grant adjustment notice in the Grant Management System (GMS). You can access information on submitting grant adjustment notices through the OJP Financial Guide. Questions about GMS should be directed to the GMS Help Desk at [email protected] or 800-458-0786 (TTY: 202-616-3867).

It is not unusual for grantees to request an extension but, before beginning this process, you should first contact your grant manager to explain the need for an extension. Your grant manager can also address any questions you have about the process.

Information on budget reporting requirements can be found on OJP’s Funding Resource Center. This website provides a detailed explanation of reporting requirements under the links to the “Financial Guide” and “Post Award Instructions.” As a JMHCP grantee, you will be required to submit performance measure data on a quarterly basis to the BJA Performance Measurement Tool (PMT). Before the first reporting deadline, we will conduct trainings to walk you through the PMT. In addition, you must also file progress reports to BJA twice a year through OJP’s Grants Management System. These reports should collect the information requested in the solicitation materials, and identified as “Data Grantee Provides” in objectives 1-6. You should describe the level of success you have had around these objectives and your activities to date. The Post Award Instructions document also contains a list of frequently asked questions about these reporting requirements that may be helpful to you.

If you are a planning and implementation grantee (category II), you will also be required to submit a copy of a completed planning and implementation guide, which we will tell you about in your grantee orientation webinar.

The Council of State Governments Justice Center can support your grant activities with information, resource materials, and answers to your questions during the term of your grant. The CSG Justice Center has great expertise on staff, has authored numerous publications, and is well-positioned to connect you with other sources of information and assistance. The staff can also help connect you with colleagues so you can benefit from their experiences. If you have any questions, contact the Justice Center staff person assigned to your project.

The CSG Justice Center also coordinates its work closely with the GAINS Center for Behavioral Health and Justice Transformation, which provides technical assistance to recipients of several of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health and Services Administration’s grant programs.

The Council of State Governments Justice Center may be able to provide on-site technical assistance to grantees. You can discuss this with the Justice Center staff member assigned to your project as you develop a technical assistance plan.

At each juncture of the criminal justice process—from before arrest to after release from a correctional facility—there are steps that you can take to improve the response to people with mental illnesses in your community. The Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project Report (Consensus Project Report) provides more than 100 recommendations, endorsed by law enforcement, judges, advocates, consumers, and corrections officials, for addressing the problem at different stages of the criminal justice process. The many different points of intervention you can consider are presented on the flowchart of events along the criminal justice continuum on page 24 of the Consensus Project Report.

One common denominator among all strategies that provide a response to this problem is a commitment to collaboration between at least one criminal justice and one mental health agency. Chapter Five of The Consensus Project Report provides recommendations for improving collaboration. The Justice Center’s Advocacy Handbook provides useful strategies for reaching out to different stakeholder agencies and groups.

Communities working to improve outcomes for people with mental illnesses in contact with the criminal justice system can benefit greatly from a better understanding of the experiences of colleagues from across the country. The Justice Center regularly features profiles and news articles about JMHCP grantees and other criminal justice and behavioral health programs—you may subscribe to receive updates. Additionally, the National Criminal Justice Initiatives Map provides information about recipients of federal funding related to reentry and recidivism reduction across the country.

It is important to collect outcome data and educate your community about the availability of services for people with mental illness coming into contact with the criminal justice system in order to plans successfully for future sustainability. Chapter Eight of The Consensus Project Report provides recommendations for disseminating findings and publicizing the successes of a program.

Mental Health Court programs will find A Guide to Collecting Mental Health Court Outcome Data a helpful resource for planning their data collection.

The Justice Center and BJA publication Navigating the Mental Health Maze provides a useful synopsis of mental illnesses and the mental health system for criminal justice professionals.

Chapter Six of The Consensus Project Report provides recommendations on training for law enforcement, courts, corrections, and mental health professionals as well as strategies for identifying and evaluating trainers and educating the community.

For grantees focusing on law enforcement/mental health collaborations, the Justice Center, in partnership with the Police Executive Research Forum and with support from BJA, released Improving the Response to People with Mental Illnesses: Strategies for Effective Law Enforcement Training, a report that outlines strategies for specialized law enforcement training.

Programs designed to improve outcomes for people with mental illnesses in contact with the criminal justice system require effective community mental health treatments and supports. Recent research has identified mental health services that have demonstrated positive outcomes for individuals with mental illness. The GAINS Center has developed fact sheets and detailed discussion papers on evidence-based practices and how they can be applied in criminal justice settings.

Co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders are common among individuals targeted in criminal justice-mental health programs. The CSG Justice Center report Adults with Behavioral Health Needs under Correctional Supervision: A Shared Framework for Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Recovery introduces a framework that can be used at the corrections and behavioral health systems level to prioritize scarce resources based on objective assessments of individuals’ risk of committing a future crime and their mental health and substance abuse treatment and support needs.

Communities that focus their efforts on the juvenile population will encounter challenges unique to this age group. The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice (NCMHJJ) offers a number of resources, including training resources and guides for screening and assessing juveniles admitted to a detention facility for mental illnesses.

Juvenile and adult mental health courts share some common features, but differ in several important ways, including the types of screening instruments and treatments used, approaches taken to issues of confidentiality, and the added component of family involvement in the criminal justice process. The NCMHJJ has developed a series of resources on juvenile mental health courts.

The Justice Center launched the National Reentry Resource Center (NRRC)—an unprecedented initiative to advance the safe and successful return of individuals from prisons and jails to their local communities. For more information on juveniles and reentry, see the NRRC’s juvenile reentry webpage and Core Principles for Reducing Recidivism and Improving Other Outcomes for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System, a white paper promoting what works to support successful reentry for youth who are under juvenile justice system supervision.

The Justice Center released Improving Responses to People with Mental Illnesses: The Essential Elements of a Specialized Law Enforcement-Based Programreport that articulates 10 essential elements derived from recommendations made by a broad range of practitioners and other related experts. They provide practitioners and policymakers with a common framework for program design and implementation that will promote positive outcomes while being sensitive to every jurisdiction’s distinct needs and resources.

Various models of specialized police responses to people with mental illnesses are emerging in communities across the country. Some police departments intensively train a cadre of officers who provide a first response to all calls in which mental illness is believed to be a factor and improve safety by using crisis de-escalation skills. Others pair law enforcement and mental health professionals to provide a second response and connect these individuals with community-based mental health services more effectively.

Two resources explore the similarities and differences among these program models. The TAPA Center for Jail Diversion monograph A Guide to Implementing Police-Based Diversion Programs for People with Mental Illness, describes these program models, identifies common program characteristics, details implementation steps, and offers lessons learned. Chapter Two of The Consensus Project Report looks generally at each of the different steps of a police encounter with a person with mental illness and offers recommendations for adapting the particular approach to your community: request for police service, on-scene assessment, on-scene response, incident documentation, and police response evaluation.

This Justice Center, in partnership with PERF and with support from BJA, is developing a series of resources for law enforcement practitioners and their community partners as part of BJA’s Law Enforcement/Mental Health Partnership Program. The Essential Elements (discussed above) serves as the centerpiece of this series. The Improving Responses to People with Mental Illnesses series includes a collection of resources that will complement the essential elements: a practical handbook on implementing effective training strategies; a monograph on tailoring law enforcement responses to the unique needs of the jurisdiction, which will include specific examples from the field; and Web-based information on statewide efforts to coordinate these law enforcement responses.

Developing a Mental Health Court: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum is a free online multimedia curriculum for individuals and teams seeking to start, maintain, or just learn about mental health courts. Developed by the Justice Center with the support of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, it is the first single resource with the information teams need to translate current research on mental health courts into program design and operation.

The Guide to Mental Health Court Design and Implementation describes different steps planners will encounter when launching a mental health court and addresses issues such as determining whether a mental health court is the most appropriate court-based program for a jurisdiction, selecting a screening mechanism for potential court participants, and sustaining a court’s operation. The Essential Elements of a Mental Health Court builds upon the Guide by describing ten features—identified by leading experts and informed by hundreds of practitioners—as critical to establishing and sustaining a mental health court.

To facilitate peer-to-peer assistance among mental health courts, the Bureau of Justice Assistance has established a network of four designated mental health court “learning sites”: Bonneville County (ID) Mental Health Court; Dougherty County (GA) Superior Court Mental Health and Substance Abuse Division; New York (NY) EAC’s Mental Health Diversion Program; and Ramsey County (MN) Mental Health Court. These sites represent a diversity of regions, populations, perspectives, and court models. These courts have opened their doors to assisting other jurisdictions through conversations and site visits. To learn more about the Mental Health Court Learning Sites Program coordinated by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, contact Sarah Wurzburg at [email protected]. The Justice Center has also published Mental Health Courts: A Guide to Research-Informed Policy and Practice, which adapts available research and experience from the field on mental health court design, function, and outcomes. The Guide features discussions of a number of practical issues confronting the field, including issues of competency and target population changes for mental health courts.

Outcome data can be of enormous value to mental health courts in their efforts to demonstrate the initial promise of their approach and garner long-term support as well as make data-driven program modifications. A Guide to Collecting Mental Health Court Outcome Data provides practical strategies for obtaining and analyzing data. It also identifies challenges that mental health courts often face during the data collection process and ways in which to overcome them.

The National Institute of Corrections (NIC), a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, together with the Council of State Governments Justice Center has developed a tool to help criminal justice and mental health organizations assess their existing level of collaboration.

As part of its technical assistance work in this area, the Council of State Governments Justice Center has developed detailed case studies of corrections/mental health collaboration in several jurisdictions. One case study describes what leaders of the Departments of Corrections and the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services in Kansas have done together to improve the likelihood of safe and successful transitions from prison to the community for individuals with mental illness. The Orange County, Florida case study describes the experiences of county jail staff and community providers collaborating to design post-booking diversion options.

The National Institute of Justice has funded two groups to develop screening instruments for jails. Both instruments have psychometric properties, with low rates of false positives and false negatives that allow for the detection of individuals who warrant additional assessment for mental illnesses. The Brief Jail Mental Health Screen, developed by Policy Research Associates, can be used as a screening instrument for both men and women. The Correctional Mental Health Screen, developed by researchers at the University of Connecticut, provides separate instruments for men and women.

The GAINS Center has developed fact sheets and detailed discussion papers on six evidence-based practices and how they can be applied in criminal justice settings. Three of the evidence-based practices are particularly relevant for individuals transitioning from jail or prison into the community: Assertive Community Treatment, evidence-based housing programs, and supported employment.