Jail to Community: A coordinated opioid use disorder (OUD) offender reentry program which aims to transforms Denver County's medication assisted treatment (MAT) system of care for inmates, by expanding MAT and reentry planning based on behavioral health and criminal justice factors within a correctional institution followed by direct linkage to, recovery supports, community MAT, substance use and mental health treatment.
Jail to Community, the partnership between Denver correctional, treatment service agencies and recovery support organizations led by Denver Health and Hospital Authority (DHHA), proposes to integrate MAT within a correctional setting and implement risk assessment and reentry planning. Post-release, recovery support services and substance abuse and mental health treatment will be integrated into a seamless program specifically designed to reduce the burden of opioids by increasing local capacity to provide treatment and support to this high risk opioid using population.
Among the key features of this project will be the development of a fully licensed and accredited narcotic treatment programs in the Denver County Jail, therapeutic caseworkers who will link participants to community resources and recovery support, and the delivery of additional evidence-based practices such as strength-based case management, trauma-focused treatment, motivational interviewing using the stages-of-change approach and thinking-for-change curriculum to parallel with MAT and community supervision. Denver's Jail to Community will deliver these interventions to a total of 1,000 unduplicated individuals over the five-year project period.
The performance assessment will be conducted by Denver Public Health, an organization with extensive experience in the evaluation of public health programs, including several current federal grant-funded projects. It will include both process and outcome evaluations and will ensure the collection of all required GPRA performance measures. Results will be used to meet federal reporting requirements, and to support continuous program improvements and the achievement of a sustainable program model. Our program has set the following aggressive objectives of achievement:
90% access to treatment,
50% retained in treatment,
60% abstinence from substance abuse,
20% with stable housing,
30% improvement in employment status,
50% socially connected, and
50% reduction in criminal justice involvement in 5 years.
