Minutes 10-08-2020 Virtual Work Session

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7 services and housing, administered by Housing for New Hope -- this program ended when Housing for New Hope ended work in Orange County in 2016. In April 2019, over thirty community stakeholders from the criminal justice system, healthcare, behavioral health system, and housing came together to participate in the Orange County Sequential Intercept Mapping Workshop facilitated by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. A systems intercept map and Final Report were created (SIM Final Report) and one of the identified community gaps that emerged from this process was the need to divert people who are high utilizers of the courts, health care, and homelessness systems from further criminal justice contact. At the same time, stakeholders from the criminal justice system including law enforcement, the District Attorney's office, the Orange County Criminal Justice Resource Department (CJRD), and criminal justice reform advocates are seeking to expand harm reduction deflection efforts in Orange County. The current pre-arrest diversion program administered by the CJRD (OC PAD) allows for law enforcement to divert first-offenders, but the OC PAD Advisory Committee, District Attorney's Office and all law enforcement chiefs have endorsed proceeding with a plan to expand to a separate harm reduction track, which would allow for diversion for low level offenses committed by individuals impacted by behavioral health concerns, homelessness and prior criminal justice involvement. These high utilizers will be linked to appropriate resources and will avoid the trauma of arrest, short-term incarceration and justice system involvement. This harm reduction model of diversion moves away from ineffective punitive models and unnecessary law enforcement response and increases public safety, enhances stability and improves public health. With the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, homeless service providers reduced, changed, and eliminated existing services to comply with social distancing and other response recommendations. As a result, existing homeless service gaps, including street outreach, have been exacerbated and deepened. On any given night, there are thirty to forty people living unsheltered in Orange County. We are seeing these numbers increase during the COVID-19 response and recovery period. Research shows that street outreach programs that link people with housing improve health outcomes and positively impact spending in other sections including healthcare and the criminal justice system. In addition, recent national incidents of police brutality have led to a new urgency in addressing systemic racism in policing and a conversation about reinvestment in communities. Increasing therapeutic responses and deflection from the criminal justice system, where it is safe and appropriate, have been widely considered an evidence-based best practice for improved outcomes for individuals. Reimagining law enforcement as one of the conduits for referring people in crisis to behavioral health treatment experts and peer support is an important example of a reinvestment in impacted communities. In August 2020, the CJRD and Housing Departments were awarded an Emergency Solutions CARES Act grant in the amount of$256,225.00 for the Street Outreach and Harm Reduction Program. This one year of funding will support three positions to administer the program, which is designed to connect people living unsheltered with housing, therapeutic interventions, critical resources and ongoing peer support and case management. The program will also increase harm reduction efforts and reduce unnecessary law enforcement response and justice involvement, where deflection is appropriate. RECOMMENDATION(S): The Manager recommends the Board receive the presentation as information.