Wednesday, January 15, 2025
1/15/2025
The Staten Island - Partnership for Early Diversion (SI-PED) is a coalition of direct service providers and representatives of the criminal justice system expanding early diversion on Staten Island for people with a mental illness of co-occurring disorder (COD). SI-PED targets inflection points that commonly lead to arrest and institutes a quicker response and assessment system, which leads to referrals into evidence-based practice early diversion programs through partners. Led by the Staten Island Performing Provider System (SI PPS), the project establishes a Behavioral Health Partnership working group among the stakeholders on Staten Island and offers multiple routes to diversion, ensuring access to early diversion services before arrest and booking, and through collaborations that ensure first contact with criminal justice systems do not lead to a permanent record. The target population will be adults with a mental illness or co-occurring disorder (COD). Staten Island is at the epicenter of the opioid crisis in New York, and expanded early diversion efforts can make a significant impact. The SI-PED strategy is to: Provide quick, effective assessments in critical points of inflection that often lead to an arrest, booking, and criminal record. Inflection points include the emergency room (which often engages with those experiencing homelessness), through emotionally disturbed persons calls, through first contact with a NYPD precinct, and through those engaging with community-based direct service providers who may be a good fit for the program. Assessments will include in-person clinical interviews and responses as well as telehealth options to ensure quick responses at all times. Make referrals into community-based, evidence-based practice (EBP) early diversion services coordinated and led by partners. Follow up with all engaged participants and ensure strategies are effective through weekly case conference meetings. Build community capacity by expanding the Behavioral Health Partnership working group. This work expands on projects that SI PPS and collaborators are already working on, including HOPE (Heroin Overdose Prevention and Education), a pre-arraignment diversion program designed to redirect low-level drug offenders with substance use disorder to community-based health services, instead of jail and prosecution, and the Hotspotting the Opioid Overdose Epidemic (Hotspotting Program), which uses data to identify at-risk individuals for an overdose and institutes preventative care. Because of these complementary, ongoing efforts, SI-PED will be able to launch quickly and effectively, expanding the scope of early diversion on Staten Island. The program’s objectives are aligned under three goals: Goal 1 - Increase the capacity of Staten Island organizations and agencies to divert and connect more adults prior to booking and criminalization by connecting agencies, nonprofits, and hospital systems across the community; Goal 2 - Increase diversion for adults from first contact with the criminal justice systems to community-based mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) services; and Goal 3 - Decrease criminalization rate leading to a criminal record in Richmond County. Project name: Staten Island - Partnership for Early Diversion (SI-PED) Project geography: Staten Island, New York; Richmond County Number served: 475 onboarded into the program, progressing by respective year from 75, to 85, to 95, to 105, to 115.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).