More than 600,000 people come home from prison every year. With a job and support, they have a chance to succeed. This is the mission of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), a national partner of Unite Us. CEO provides immediate, effective, and comprehensive employment services to individuals who have recently returned home from incarceration.

Unite Us shares CEO’s vision that everyone, regardless of whether they have had involvement with the justice system, should have the preparation and support needed to find a job and stay connected to the labor force. We believe that all individuals deserve the chance to shape a stronger future for themselves, their family, and their communities.

The Unite Us partnership has greatly strengthened how CEO’s program has been able to assist their participants, including by successfully integrating our software with their Salesforce instance. This integration has enabled CEO to work more efficiently and connect program participants across the country to community partners seamlessly. These direct connections to community-based organizations, agencies, and programs have helped CEO better support participants in navigating the barriers they face during their reentry process.

For this series, we asked the CEO team about our work together and their vision of how cross-sector collaboration creates lasting change for justice-involved individuals.

As we reflect on a decade bringing sectors together through technology to ensure people’s needs are met, what do you think has changed the most for your organization since the start of our partnership?

Since the beginning of our partnership, CEO has continually appreciated how technology can help us more comprehensively support people returning home from incarceration. It is critical we provide returning citizens with digital skills training, facilitate housing support, make referrals to mental health professionals, and foster connections to other local supportive services. Our partnership with Unite Us has strengthened our ability to meet these needs at scale—which is no small feat given that CEO operates in 31 local communities.

How does CEO think about or approach collaboration with other sectors? What are the benefits to your participants?

Because CEO focuses on the intersection of economic mobility and criminal legal system reform, our work would not be possible without strong partnerships. First and foremost, we rely heavily on collaboration with community-based partners in all CEO locations, especially organizations led by BIPOC individuals and individuals impacted by the criminal legal system. This ensures our model complements and strengthens the network of support that has long helped people return home successfully to their local communities. We also work with local and national employers who value hiring people with convictions and investing in them as high-impact talent. And finally, we rely on government agencies. This includes probation and parole, who can identify people who might benefit from CEO’s services, as well as state departments of transportation, housing authorities, and other government stakeholders who collaborate with CEO to provide participants with transitional jobs. Partners like Unite Us allow us to focus on our strengths and work more efficiently to support CEO participants and advance our overall mission.

Are there any upcoming programs or initiatives related to drivers of health and community health at CEO that you are excited about?

Food security is absolutely essential to individual and community health. This is why we’re supporting the introduction of bipartisan federal legislation that ensures no one has to choose between job training and putting food on the table. Under current law, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients risk losing their food security because of temporary wages they earn in job training or work-based learning programs. The newly introduced Training and Nutrition Stability Act (TNSA), H.R. 3087, aims to remedy this “catch-22.”  The bill would allow them to maintain their nutrition supports—leading to better training opportunities, permanent employment, and food security. CEO led the development of this 2023 legislation, which has the support of over 100 organizations. CEO has been proud to work alongside Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Max Miller (R-OH), Alma Adams (D-NC), and Marcus Molinaro (R-NY) to make this change to the Farm Bill so that thousands of justice-impacted individuals get the support they need during their reentry journey. 

Looking another 10 years into the future, what is your biggest hope for cross-sector collaboration to improve community health?

Of the many risks revealed by the COVID crisis, we are hopeful that there is greater attention paid to the impact of financial well-being on community health. We know that returning home from incarceration presents a financial struggle to hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Typically, people are released from incarceration with almost nonexistent support: anywhere from $0 to a few hundred dollars in “gate money.” Most returning citizens are ineligible for many safety-net programs or face disparate barriers to accessing them. During COVID, these challenges were compounded by employer layoffs and strained social safety nets. 

CEO worked to meet the increased immediate needs for people returning home by setting up something new—an ambitious cash transfer program that ultimately distributed more than $24 million to over 10,000 people. Recipients received amounts ranging from $1,000 to $2,750 in their first few months post-release, which provided a substantially enhanced safety net to support their reentry. CEO envisions a future where this kind of cash assistance is a permanent feature of people’s reentry, and we are advocating for legislation toward that goal. We feel strongly that giving people the right resources promotes autonomy, economic resilience, and healthier communities.

What thoughts would you share with Unite Us leadership as they look out on the next 10 years?

As technology continues to advance and create economic growth, it’s important that disadvantaged community members are not excluded from these gains. Low-skilled workers often are less likely to prioritize building new skills and learning new technologies as they juggle other priorities with limited support– this is especially important given the rapid evolution of generative AI. It has been essential for CEO’s program to emphasize digital skills that help CEO participants catch up on the rapid technological changes that occurred during their incarceration. Even someone who serves a short sentence will come home to significant shifts in technology. And for those who serve longer sentences, these adjustments to technology can be even more jarring. We believe this is a signal and call to action to revitalize how we connect justice-impacted workers to the jobs of the future. We will also need to listen to directly impacted people about economic barriers they face due to automation, artificial intelligence, and other technological disruptions. We look forward to partnering with Unite Us in this mission over the next decade.

Learn more about the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO).

Interested in learning more about how to bring Unite Us to your organization?

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In this virtual roundtable co-hosted by Unite Us and City & State, a prominent policy-focused publication, we address some of the biggest issues in healthcare today—including care delivery to support the reentry of justice-involved individuals and Medicaid transformation. Hear from experts in the Northeast as they examine challenges around community-wide care coordination, and discuss how meaningful data helps achieve social care coordination at scale.

The post Transforming Care Delivery: Driving Systematic Change to Fully Integrate Health and Social Care appeared first on uniteus.com.

At Unite Us, our partnerships with Coordinated Entry systems (CES) across the country demonstrate the impact of partnering trusted housing provider networks with coordinated social care networks. With the growing housing crisis in the U.S., the need for collaboration and coordination has never been higher.

Networks powered by Unite Us across the country consistently show housing services as one of the most requested services within our partner communities. The need for housing services and support likely doesn’t come as a shock for anyone working within health or human services. Community-based organizations that provide emergency shelter and housing interventions continue to work tirelessly to use the available resources in their communities and have embraced any and all funding streams that have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the need for affordable housing is at an all-time high.

“Before Unite Us, there were ‘side doors’ to housing and things were not always done in a fair way,” said Ashley Gunnels, CES Coordinator at Housing Solutions in Tulsa. “Now, there’s only one way in, and because of that, we’re prioritizing correctly and reaching the most vulnerable people.”

How Unite Us compliments coordinated entry systems

The concept of human services networks is not new for housing providers. Existing local Continuum of Care (CoC) and Coordinated Entry systems (CES) have a built-in network of community partners. For federally-funded housing providers to receive funding from HUD, they must adhere to their local CES requirements. Understandably, this can result in concerns about using a new technology that may compete with an existing network of partners and workflows. In reality, Unite Us networks complement and bolster local CES systems by bringing clients to the local CES’s front door when appropriate and connecting clients to other housing and social service opportunities when needed.

North Carolina network gets families the help they need when they need it

In North Carolina, the NCCARE360 network powered by Unite Us connects clients to housing resources, speeding up the time it takes to get clients connected to a safe and stable housing option. In one example, a client was connected through the local Department of Public Health to a rental assistance program so that their family did not lose their home. They were successfully matched to a provider that was able to quickly provide funds for the back payment of rent, enabling this family to remain in their home.

The Greensboro Housing Coalition said of NCCARE360, “We strongly appreciate the feedback loop built into NCCARE360 between agencies making and receiving referrals. In the past, referrals have come our way for things that we can’t or don’t do, and the clients have had to come to us to find this out. NCCARE360 has streamlined things for the consumer, saving them time so they don’t need to use resources to travel to an agency that might not be able to help them.”

Oklahoma CoC streamlines coordination and outcomes

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the community-based organization Housing Solutions works within their CoC to house more than 1,300 people facing homelessness in the greater Tulsa region. “That number seems to grow every day,” said Ashley Gunnels, CES Coordinator at Housing Solutions. “Evictions are so high that every time we start to make progress, the same amount of people are still in need. You can’t get ahead of anything.” Tulsa ranks 11^th in the U.S. for eviction rates, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the crisis of homelessness.

Housing Solutions is the lead agency for their local CoC working with thirty other community-based organizations, twelve of which are dedicated CES providers. They’ve been coordinating through the Unite Oklahoma network since 2020. Reflecting on the interface between Unite Us and the federal Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), Gunnels said, “They work hand-in-hand. HMIS is our main database and we use Unite Us for referrals and adding new clients. The platform is streamlined so you know exactly what referrals you’re working with, where they came from, and you can track when they are accepted, rejected, or when a client gets housed – no one is getting lost in a string of emails.”

Housing Solutions looks to the Unite Us Platform for more than just case management, however. Olivia Denton Koopman, Director of Data and Analytics with Housing Solutions, can now identify previously unknown gaps in housing capacity within their network and facilitate important conversations to close those gaps.

“I pulled the data last week and discovered a local agency that was rejecting 26 percent of referrals sent, compared to a 10 percent average with the others. To be able to start that conversation is an insight we didn’t have before and allows us, as partners, to address gaps in our network,” explains Koopman.

Koopman and Gunnels have found that since Housing Solutions joined the Unite Us network, they have been able to house people faster—in some cases within one week—and can account for every referral.

Bringing Unite Us to your community

At Unite Us, our partnerships with Coordinated Entry systems across the country demonstrate the impact of partnering trusted housing provider networks with the coordinated social care networks. With the growing housing crisis in the U.S., the need for collaboration and coordination among community-based organizations has never been higher. Please reach out for more information on joining a network in your state or how our work can support your local housing agencies.

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In 2015, Daniel Silva was released from prison in Sacramento, California. He had spent the last 39 years in prison. Wrongfully charged with a crime he didn’t commit, Daniel was tried as an adult and handed a life sentence at 17. Now the CEO of Self Awareness and Recovery (SAR), a non-profit organization he founded while still incarcerated, Daniel’s path to becoming a changemaker in the Sacramento community is a story of resilience, dedication, and self-determination.

Daniel describes the first two decades of his time in prison as a time where he felt “completely lost.” A spark of change and transformation in his life came through his participation in a trauma support program, where he learned the tools and skills needed to confront and process his past traumas as a means to healing. In this program, Daniel first heard someone say, “hurt people hurt people, but healed people heal people,” a mantra that resonated with him and would later become a guiding principle for his work. After his release from prison, Daniel continued the SAR mission. He established the non-profit organization outside of prison to continue offering trauma support workshops for previously incarcerated individuals reentering society and youth in the community. SAR teaches justice-involved youth and adults how to heal from trauma and turn away from self-destructive patterns and behaviors. Since its conception, SAR workshops have spread to ten other prisons across California.

Timely connection to wrap-around services is key to reentry success

Reentry refers to the process by which detained or incarcerated individuals return to the community upon release from state or federal prisons, jails, or parole. Once released, the longer it takes for a person to get connected to reentry services, the more likely they are to carry out repeat offending, otherwise known as recidivism.Over half of all incarcerated individuals lived in poverty before their arrest and are more likely to return to poverty or experience homelessness after their release, with little assistance provided upon release. 64% of our jail population suffers from mental illness, 68% from substance use disorders, and 44% from chronic health problems. Communities need centralized infrastructure that can coordinate care and support diversion and reentry initiatives to break these cycles.

“The Unite Us network makes it possible for SAR navigators to support adults and youth in the Sacramento community who have been or might be involved in the justice system. The network makes it possible for us to coordinate and connect those we serve with the resources they need to be successful and heal from the trauma they have experienced.”

-Daniel Silva, Self Awareness & Recovery (SAR)

Models of success

Since 1970, the U.S. prison population has risen by over 400 percent and currently one in every 35 U.S. adults are in prison, jail, on parole, or probation. The community network infrastructure created by Unite Us provides a collaborative ecosystem of health, human, and social service providers that leverages evidence-informed interventions needed for successful reentry. No longer are providers relegated to disconnected silos, attempting to be all things to each of their clients. Instead, with the Unite Us Platform, community partners can coordinate services across sectors to provide the full range of service and support. Daniel and the SAR navigators are working within a diverse network in the Sacramento community able to offer connections to multiple types of supports and services. Here are just a few examples:

• Sacramento Covered bridges the gap between systems and the community through a peer-driven, one-on-one approach to best respond to individual needs. They recently partnered with the Sacramento County Department of Public Health’s Adult Correctional Health program to help ease the transition during reentry by ensuring that medical treatment and medication continue beyond release from incarceration.
• The Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) is one of the most effective rehabilitation programs in the country. ARC has a high level of success, with an approximate 11% recidivism rate. Key to their success is peer-to-peer counseling and collaboration with community partners and agencies across sectors.
• The Health Education Council (HEC) is committed to promoting health in underserved communities, including promoting health through neighborhood safety. With programs like Facilitadores Comunitarios and Sacramento Youth Violence Prevention Collective, HEC connects communities with the necessary services and support to safeguard youth and adults from lifestyles influenced by crime.

Now is the time for coordinated solutions

In recent years, we have witnessed leaders across sectors challenge the inequities in our criminal justice system and advocate for more effective methods of curbing crime and recidivism. Unite Us acknowledges our role in supporting this change by building community networks that are ready, able, and willing to provide the wraparound support justice-involved youth and adults need. Together, our community partners meet immediate social needs while tracking outcomes and engaging in community-wide discussions on data and policy. Though criminal justice reform will not come overnight, we are confident that in coming together, our collective action can make an even greater impact on health and health equity.

Watch the Forum on Criminal Justice Reform to hear more about what these organizations are doing to reform criminal justice in California:

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The post Welcome Home: Using Coordinated Care Networks to Aid Reentry and Ensure Anti-Recidivism appeared first on uniteus.com.

As the features within Unite Us develop and mature, leaders in different fields look to our team for guidance on how these tools can be implemented to meet their goals. One mission that continues to surface is the improvement of the reentry experience for people returning home from jail or prison. While we could begin this post by regarding reentry programs as a cost-saving mechanism for local, state, and federal governments and showing how Unite Us fits in to that picture, that would not serve our company’s purpose. Reentry programs in the context of our work are meant to reintegrate people in to society before and after they leave jail or prison in hopes that the transition is compassionate, coordinated, and successful. Though it is important to identify ways to reduce recidivism, and subsequently, government and taxpayer spending, a person’s humanity should always be the center of reentry work. With that, this post is meant to highlight what a person needs upon leaving jail or prison, tools to connect a person with those needs, andhow to implement those tools throughout a community.

The People and Services Inside

To create a compassionate care coordination model in this context, it is important to first acknowledge the whole person, not just the person leaving jail or prison. We need to explore what their lives might have been like prior to arrest or incarceration and inside to fully understand what services and support they might need upon release.

First, jail and prison populations are largely composed of people who were poor before arrest or incarceration. A study by the Prison Policy Institute found that in 2014, incarcerated people had a median annual income of $19,185 prior to their incarceration, which is 41 percent less than non-incarcerated people of similar ages.¹ There are approximately 53,000 youth held in facilities due to juvenile or criminal justice involvement, and most are held in detention centers operated by local authorities. With an education stunted, it is not surprising that a quarter of formerly incarcerated people do not have a basic high school diploma or GED.²

Regarding health conditions, it is estimated that half of people in USjails and prisons have a mental illness. In her book Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, Alissa Roth found that of all women in state prison, 75 percent have a mental illness, compared to 55 percent for men. Women involved in the criminal justice system are more likely to have experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, trauma, and have substance use problems. Last, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses is 11 times that of what is was in 1980. The Center on Addiction asserts that of the 1.5 million people in jail and prison who met clinical diagnostic criteria for a substance use disorder in 2006, only 11.2 percent had received any type of professional treatment since admission.³ Despite evidence of effective treatments, the two most common forms of approaches to people convicted of drug offenses are self-help programs and drug education/awareness programs.

Roth makes an acute observation in her studies of mental healthcare in prisons: corrections officers are the eyes and ears of the clinicians in noticing who is sick and who needs treatment. However, privacy and HIPAA rules prevent them from accessing medical records, and officers are trained to maintain order, not to notice particular behaviors and respond accordingly. Unfortunately, this and other fundamental problems including overcrowding, shortage of providers, and lack of funding for facilities has caused healthcare for people in jails and prisons to majorly suffer.

The goal of jail and prison is at odds with what a person might need; deprivation and incapacitation do not lend to a rehabilitative environment. Because jails and prisons lack the theoretical and financial attention to basic needs and treatment, the stage is set for complication upon release and a cycle between correctional and community agencies.

What a Person Needs

Let’s run with an example: James is incarcerated in a New York State correctional facility. James has a group of friends inside, a job, shelter, and healthcare. James suffered from alcohol addiction prior to being incarcerated and takes an antidepressant medication. He is attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in prison and rarely sees his family or friends, as the correctional facility is about a five hour drive from his home. James is looking forward to his upcoming release date—he was granted parole after serving his minimum sentence.

James lives in a highly structured, non-autonomous environment with little control over obtaining the services he needs. If he is unsatisfied with the pay at his job, the amenities of his shelter, or the people he spends time with, he cannot change his circumstances. However, once James returns home, he will have complete freedom with none of the structure or guarantees that prison provided.

While care coordination plays a role in connecting people to diverse needs, it also lessens the shock of transitioning back to autonomy and life without structure. The Women’s Prison Association outlined basic life areas that shape a person’s success when returning to the community that include livelihood, residence, family, health and sobriety, criminal justice compliance, and social/civic connection.⁴ We will use a few of these categories to dig deeper into what a person needs upon returning home.

Residence

This is likely the most defining need for a person’s reentry success; without shelter, people leaving jail or prison are at high risk for recidivism. The Prison Policy Institute postulates that formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public.⁵ Affordable housing is scarce in most places around the US, and public housing authorities can obtain criminal records for all applicants, which makes for great uncertainty when arranging reentry housing.

If James decided to apply for public housing, he would need to present evidence of his rehabilitation and treatment, but he could be permanently or temporarily barred from living in public housing depending on the nature of his crime. Otherwise, James needs to establish a residence at a family member’s home or contact local reentry organizations that offer transitional housing. He might also consider supportive housing, given his past experience with alcohol addiction.

Family and Support

A person’s social support is vital to the success of their transition from jail or prison. If we revisit our example, we can think about James going home to a family and a group of friends he has seen only a handful of times over the period of his sentence, if at all. How can he reconnect to his community after so much time away? What will happen if he doesn’t find a group of people to support his transition?

According to the Prison Policy Institute, less than a third of people in state prisons receive a visit from a loved one in a typical month — disconnection between families or friends make reentry difficult.⁶ James needs to reconnect with his family or find a group of like-minded individuals to spend time with upon his return. To do so, he might need to start calling friends to reacquaint himself with those relationships, encourage family members to pick him up once he is released from prison, or get in touch with local organizations that host support groups.

Healthcare

People in prison are the one population of Americans guaranteed healthcare by law. However, having to reconcile between disciplinary and therapeutic methodologies renders some treatments ineffective and wasteful. People receiving more intense healthcare services inside, like medication-assisted treatment, Hepatitis C treatment, or treatment for serious mental illness will need to prioritize discharge planning to prevent a delay in care. Even less intense treatments require coordination when a person leaves jail or prison, like diabetic patients and older adults who will need increased access to healthcare as they age in the community.

The challenge faced by people in jail or prison is having to cross a frontier between two separate systems for funding medical care (jail/prison to community), which typically translates into disconnected provision of care. The challenge for us is designing the system that connects people to insurance and care before they are released and organizing this disconnected frontier.

In our example, James needs to find a physician in efforts to continue his antidepressant medication, and identify an Alcoholics Anonymous group, should he wish to remain involved. To address his healthcare needs and prevent gaps in treatment, we might formalize the links from jail or prison to community-based treatment and emphasize the importance of aftercare with correctional staff planning for his reentry. His reentry plan should include the transfer of health information to local providers along with his prescription list.

Next, let’s imagine what the reentry process could look like if there was greater investment in the livelihood of people inside.

Tools to Connect a Person to those Services

There are tools to connect a person to the things they need today: email, phone calls, existing partnerships, meetings, and even reentry case management software. In New York State each person in prison is required to complete a community reentry preparation program within 120 days of release under the supervision of a Transition Service Counselor. According to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, participants are “provided a ‘portfolio’ to assist in organizing documents (e.g., birth certificates, social security cards, resumes), keeping vocation and education certificates in one place, locating reentry strategies and plans, and preserving service referral information and employment related materials.”

If this sounds like a folder full of paper documents, that is exactly what it is. Though these tools certainly support the coordination of basic needs, what if we could make the reentry process smarter, more secure, and positively impact the aforementioned statistics? We think it’s possible.

Back to our example: James is preparing for his release and his transition service counselor has identified a few basic areas of life that need to be addressed prior to release. James does not have substantial social support where he is being paroled and he needs to connect to healthcare providers and substance use treatment. Before the counselor gives James the contact information for a support group or emails a case manager at a local community-based organization, let’s step back and examine what could be implemented prior to this initial contact.

Screening

The Council of State Governments Justice Center has collected great information on the reentry process; in one report, the author states “[l]ocal jails, state departments of corrections, and community corrections agencies each employ distinct assessment procedures and maintain independent information systems, impeding the transfer of information from one corrections agency to another.” Just like in other care coordination settings, there are siloed systems that make it difficult for information sharing and inter-organization communication. Agencies experience duplication of work, while clients incur stress by having to recount their needs to multiple community partners.

By using one tool that relays pertinent information between organizations through referrals, agencies can share the most amount of baseline information at one time, while maintaining internal assessment procedures. Using Unite Us, staff members complete a screening with a client that generates suggested referrals based on the client’s answers. In coordinated care networks focused on reentry, a screening might include questions pertaining to the person’s basic life areas and generate referrals to organizations offering that service. It can also surface health needs and initiate enrollment in healthcare coverage prior to being released.

What is unique about our screening tool used in a reentry context is that it effectively reconnects a person to the autonomous and digital world they will soon join. Instead of asking someone to keep a folder with paper documents that are easily lost, damaged, and generally unprotected, a screening captures important information, sends it directly and securely to an organization that can help the client, and eases the transition to receiving services on the outside.

Securing Reentry Plans

Anothercrucial element of coordinating reentry services is the finding available services in the community once a person is released. If we want reentry to be as smooth and simple as possible, a person leaving jail or prison needs to be directly connected to a staff member or healthcare provider in the community who is expecting their release and return rather than being left to find services on their own. If reentry plans are not secured prior to release, it is highly likely they will reoffend or recidivate. We also know that without aftercare in place, any progress made from substance use treatment in jail or prison may be lost, and after being released people may return to drug use.

To connect people to the services they need, we must understand the organization’s capacity and program eligibility requirements, and keep these data points up-to-date in real time. As soon as a referral is started in Unite Us, transition service counselors can view organizations on a map in relation to the county to which the person is paroled. This map can be filtered by services offered, program eligibility requirements, and proximity to the person’s home address. If upon receipt of the referral an organization does not have capacity or the client is ineligible (e.g. not enough beds, cannot serve people with certain convictions, etc.), the referral can be rejected and sent back to the original sender for further assessment.

Similar to traditional coordinated care networks, the act of ensuring an organization can serve a client before they arrive is a major stress relief for both the people seeking and delivering services. For networks that are reentry-focused, the referral mechanism in Unite Us provides an additional layer of support to a person whose success in the community critically depends on their access to care.

How to Get Started

Before a reentry program or initiative can begin using these tools, there needs to be a group of stakeholders that is interested in improving the transition from jail or prison to society. So who makes up this group and who values this process?

Like other coordinated care networks getting off the ground, organizations looking for technology solutions to improve the transfer of client information typically know exactly who should be involved. Corrections, nonprofits, public agencies, and health systems that serve people inside jail or prison stand to benefit from joining a network because of the opportunity to transfer health, legal, and other information on a secure platform where they can see the results of their referrals in real time.

This work is beginning to take shape. The Urban Institute has developed strategies for connecting justice-involved populations to healthcare coverage where state Medicaid agencies provide incentives in contracts for managed care organizations (MCOs) to support care coordination activities as enrollees transition from jail or prison back to the community.⁷ In Ohio, MCOs supported the discharge process for people with high needs and included selection of one of the five managed care plans into the prerelease Medicaid enrollment process. Each enrollee is given a Medicaid ID card upon release and an appointment for follow-up if necessary. The key to constructing an ecosystem that supports people leaving jail or prison is to identify partners that will actively participate in care coordination and uphold the mission and standards of the network.

Once reentry care coordination processes are established, communities can even look to diversion or alternatives-to-incarceration programs to implement similar tools. For example, people in drug court often have the same needs as a person leaving prison or jail and the organizations that offer these services may overlap. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves — if you have questions about using Unite Us to build a coordinated care network, please send us a message:

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The post How Technology can Solve the Challenge of Reentry appeared first on uniteus.com.

In 2018, many policymakers across the United States pledged to direct energy toward continued criminal justice reform and the problem of mass incarceration. New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo plans to end cash bail for low-level offenses; Massachusetts Democrat candidates for Governor all agree on some repeal of mandatory minimum sentences; Civil rights lawyers put pressure on the newly elected mayor of Atlanta to actualize her reform proposals and end pretrial detention.

What was once considered to be one of America’s invisible populations, is now at the center of reform and progress. For years, advocates for criminal justice reform have pushed forward mechanisms to reduce the population residing in jails and prisons — approximately 2.2 million in 2017 — and today, there is opportunity to introduce real change in the way we seek justice.

Support for the Aging Prison Population

The Parole Preparation Project in New York City is one organization turning such aspirations into action. As a volunteer with PPPNYC, I am paired with a person in prison who is preparing for their Parole Board interview. I learn about the person and their crime, and most importantly, understand how they have spent their time in prison. PPPNYC tends to work with people in prison who have been continuously denied parole by the New York State Parole Board; after serving a minimum sentence and being denied parole an upwards of nine times, these candidates are often 40-65 years old.

It is this subdivision of inmates that amplifies the cost and sheer amount of people in prison: the aging population. The number of aging people in prison is growing. In 2016, there were more than 10,000 inmates aged 50 and over in New York State prisons, that number rising almost 98 percent since 2000. Nationwide, the aging prison population is the fastest growing segment of the inmate population. There are a few explanations for this alarming growth.

To start, the prison population serving life sentences has steadily grown. According to The Sentencing Project, approximately 161,957 people served life sentences in 2016 compared to 127,677 in 2003 — a 27 percent increase. Over time, federal and state policy changes have increased sentences for certain offenses. In California, the Three Strikes law doubled the sentence for defendants with one prior conviction and mandated 25 years to life for defendants with two or more prior convictions.

As well, opportunities for release from prison have been restricted: many states have adopted minimum sentence requirements before an inmate is eligible for parole (e.g. minimum 15-year sentence), regardless of their behavior while in prison. Without the formal motivation to work towards early release, inmates are less likely to seek rehabilitation and redemption while in prison. Finally, those who were sentenced to 20 or more years as young adults are aging into the older category of people in prison. The joined effect of more people serving more time is massive.

Why should we be concerned about these statistics and how do they relate to community health?

Cost

It costs much more to house an older adult in prison. As they age, many inmates need assistance performing daily tasks and to attend offsite medical appointments, both of which require extra correctional staffing. Additionally, today’s healthcare trends are replicated inside prison walls: the aging inmate population faces chronic health conditions, like diabetes and asthma, that are becoming more and more expensive to manage. In addition to those costs, aging inmates face age-related health concerns like hearing loss and arthritis, which often require accompanying medical equipment and devices.

The result? Aging inmates are the most expensive to incarcerate and cost taxpayers an estimate $68,270 per inmate, twice the cost of an average prisoner, according to the ACLU’s report The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly.

Recidivism

Inmates over the age of 50 are less likely to commit misconduct while incarcerated and have a far lower rate of recidivism once released, making them good candidates for release. However, once released, older justice-involved individuals face unique challenges:

• Difficulty in obtaining a job that fits their experience,
• Struggle accessing income support and other benefits due to lack of identification cards, and
• Trouble utilizing online resources to access community resources

Health for All

We should be concerned for the health of all aging people — those inside and outside prison walls. Unfortunately, prison design accelerates the decline of the overall health of justice-involved individuals. The physical structure is not accessible to aging inmates with decreased mobility. Prison staff are not trained or equipped to serve an aging population and their extended needs. As such, a person ages more rapidly while in prison because they are made to conform to buildings and medical support designed for a much younger population.

What’s Next?

It can be daunting to consider criminal justice reform and methods to reduce the number of aging people in prison. While advocacy groups across the country work to ameliorate federal and state policy, there are concrete steps community organizations and health systems can take to address the challenges faced by aging people in prison.

When a person plunges into the reentry process, either on parole or compassionate release, they need to rebuild: they must secure housing, seek medical or mental health care, and reconnect with a community on the outside. To complicate an already intense experience, people who were in prison are often left to their own devices in accessing life needs due to poor coordination among organizations that serve reentry populations.

Improving the Aging Reentry Process

The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging surveyed Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) across the United States in a study called Supporting America’s Aging Prisoner Population: Opportunities & Challenges for Area Agencies on Aging. In the report, 91 percent of respondents said they do not run programs for aging inmates or those being released. When asked what training and technical assistance could improve service to this population, 48 percent of service providers answered they would like to better understand the needs of aging inmates.

There is an evident gap in services, but importantly, an opportunity to educate community providers on how to integrate this population into their current programming and build a network for these providers to communicate. Researchers also urged, “For reentry programs, having data on the correlation between connecting recently released individuals to necessary services (such as transportation, housing and employment) and the impact on recidivism, would substantiate the need for these programs.”

Not only could a network of reentry services ease an aging inmate’s transition, the data gathered from programs and their impact on recidivism could highlight the importance of robust services and attract more funding to the initiative.

During my work with a person in prison, I notice just how many aspects of life we need to consider before their potential release: in their preferred relocation, we need to arrange a place to live (often a reentry shelter until the person can support themselves), a job or income support, and an established community or group of family members to welcome them home.

Wouldn’t it be great if, upon release, an older adult in the reentry process could ease back into their community and live out their life without added stress? We can play a role in improving the aging reentry process by establishing a formal network of services for this population. By connecting reentry housing programs, job training and recruitment agencies, medical and mental health care providers, and peer support groups, communities can begin to reintegrate these individuals with more compassion.

We have a responsibility to not only lessen the number of people entering prisons and jails, but to also thoughtfully consider the reentry process of people exiting. Starting with the aging prison population, we can learn what works and what does not when developing community-based reentry networks, coordinating services, and restoring life outside prison.

Unite Us supports justice-involved individuals transitioning back into their communities by powering accountable community-wide networks of health and social service providers. Watch our webinar to learn more about care delivery to support the reentry of justice-involved individuals.

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Every year, around 650,000 people are released from U.S. prisons.¹ Without wraparound support, many find themselves right back in the system. In fact, 76% of all former inmates in the U.S. were rearrested within five years.²

Many reoffenders suffer from mental health issues, substance addiction, and high rates of suicide, which point to a more complex problem than simply criminals being criminals. On top of stigma, many released persons face legal and regulatory sanctions and restrictions that limit or prohibit them from getting a job, occupational licensing, housing, education, and other critical opportunities. Criminal justice experts cite public safety as reasoning for some of these restrictions, yet recognize that these regulations simply keep former convicts from the opportunities they need to start over. And, without access to facilitated and complete support, it is easy to see how they could end up in trouble again.

Out of mental institutions and into prison

In the past, the mentally ill were institutionalized in psychiatric facilities. Since the 1960s, however, many of these facilities have closed or tightened their entrance requirements, leaving people with mental health problems with family and friends or left to fend for themselves.

The mentally ill often face multiple challenges, including finding and keeping a job, finding a place to live and food to eat, and even estrangement from family and friends. They may not have access to healthcare and may suffer from substance abuse. Individuals with acute mental illness, left on their own, have a difficult time staying within the law. While the level and quality of prison services vary, recently released prisoners uniformly experience a drop-in supervision. They may end up homeless and without resources, leading back to the crimes that put them in prison in the first place.

Once released, these people will have an even harder time than most in overcoming collateral consequences. Many face both subtle and outright obstacles as they try to establish a new life outside of prison. If they’ve been inside for a while, they will be unfamiliar with new technology. They may not be allowed to apply for certain jobs. And they will face a certain amount of discrimination, as a vast majority of companies utilize background checks, and will be able to see the conviction record and history of mental health issues.

How we can help put an end to the carceral cycle

To help previously incarcerated persons make their way successfully after prison, we need to look beyond the crime, treat the whole person, and coordinate the efforts of those involved. Healthcare providers and community-based organizations (CBOs) in many states know that they need each other to ensure overall well-being – to facilitate access to holistic healthcare and social services. Prisons and CBOs need to add themselves to the mix.

With a coordinated network of support and services around parole, mental health, housing and employment, those released from prison would have a much better chance of staying out.

Coordinating Holistic Care

That’s where Unite Us comes in. We build coordinated care networks that digitally inter-connect health and human service providers. These networks enable providers of all kinds – including those helping people released from prison — to seamlessly work together, integrate all social determinants of health, track people through their total health journey, and report tangible outcomes in a cohesive and collaborative ecosystem.

For those previously incarcerated, our coordinated care network can mean, for example, that the parole officer or case worker, mental health care provider, and job search expert (or employer) could provide bidirectional feedback, monitor dosage at substance counseling sessions or anger management, and be assured that the parolee is getting the proper medication and assistance.

Unite Us is a veteran-owned technology company that was initially founded to help veterans but has since expanded its reach to help communities across the United States, including those supporting the elderly, low-income and previously incarcerated populations.

Unite Us now powers 4 youth reentry service locations, each operating an employment-focused holistic care model. This work is funded by Reentry Demonstration Project(s) for Young Adults. Grantees use Unite Us to track activity, facilitate wraparound services, and prove impact to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Our proprietary platform enables every partner to send and receive referrals, track patients together, and share data and outcomes in real-time. We’ve created these cohesive and efficient ecosystems in 27 communities, so far, enabling networks to facilitate superior patient care, reduce costs and provide every partner with the data needed to accurately measure impact. And, by digitally connecting health and community services together in a centralized network, we put the patient (or ex-convict) at the center of their overall care by providing a level of engagement that cannot be found anywhere else.

We aim to empower providers to meet each person’s holistic needs and track their “total health journey”.

To learn more, contact Unite Us at 1-844-786-4838.

1 https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/07/19/nine-lessons-about-criminal-justice-reform#.XyIlucrHf

2 https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4986%20

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