Leavenworth County Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program

Leavenworth County, Kansas is requesting funding to implement a Leavenworth County Justice and Mental Health Collaboration, a multiagency project overseen by Leavenworth County Community Corrections in partnership with the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Office and The Guidance Center with the Applied Research and Evaluation Technologies Group. The project area includes Leavenworth County (pop. 82,892), which encompasses both suburban and rural communities and the City of Leavenworth, which serves as the County seat (pop. 37,081).

The purpose is to strategically improve the regions capacity to respond to individuals with mental health disorders or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who come in contact with the criminal justice system by purchasing technology to begin collecting data and sharing information between agencies, partnering with professional research and evaluators to monitor progress and fidelity of evidence-based practices, creating a Crisis Intervention Team training committee, funding to embed behavioral health professionals within community supervision, providing on-going training to probation staff, law enforcement officers, court staff, and behavioral health partners.

We anticipate serving approximately 1,500 individuals over the course of the grant. This project will advance equity and remove barriers to accessing treatment services by improving local justice responses to a community that has been historically underserved. There are no planned conference activities for the recommended award.