Escondido Community Sobering and Stabilization (ECSS) Program

The Bureau of Justice Assistance's (BJA) Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) is funded through the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-414), which was reauthorized in 2008 (Public Law 110-416). The primary purpose of JMHCP is to increase public safety by facilitating collaboration among the criminal justice, juvenile justice, and mental health and substance abuse treatment systems to increase access to mental health and other treatment services for those individuals with mental illness or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Jurisdictions are eligible to apply for planning, planning and implementation, or expansion funding through JMHCP.

The Escondido Police Department will use grant funds to enhance the community's justice and mental health collaboration, through the Escondido Community Sobering and Stabilization (ECSS) program. This program has two operating components: (a) a short-term community "sobering service", providing a safe, secure alternative to incarceration for adult inebriates to reach initial sobriety and be assessed for appropriate further assistance; and (b) a transitional housing component with intensive case management and treatment for homeless adult men and women, whose homelessness is associated with a chronic substance abuse/mental health history. The applied mental health treatment facet of this program is to be provided through the transitional housing component. Interfaith Community Services is the nonprofit operator of the ECSS program. Neighborhood Healthcare is the contract provider of psychiatric and mental health counseling services at the ECSS program. The City of Escondido Police Department, and a specially-trained Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT) deliver community inebriates and those encountered with mental health barriers to the ECSS program as an alternative to county jail incarceration.
The Police/ECSS partnership has operated in Escondido for approximately 14 years, established at its current operating location for 13 years. The proposed expansion is a 50percent increase of PERT operating presence in the community, a 100 percent increase in ECSS program behavioral health counseling and 400 percent increase in ECSS program dedicated psychiatric care.

CA/NCF