(Chris Moran, Houston Chronicle)
To Houston police, Franchesica was a regular. About every other month, said Franchesica, a mentally ill woman who declined to give her last name, she had episodes in which she would “go off,” banging the wall with her head. They landed her in the Harris County Psychiatric Center more than once, she said, and in prison, too.
That changed after she started getting visits from Shadawn McCants, a case manager from the Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County. Last year, the city spent $134,000 on the Chronic Consumer Stabilization Initiative that sends McCants and a colleague to check on the 30 people with mental illness whom officers say they are dispatched to see the most. Among them are a 53-year-old man whom police ended up taking to psychiatric lockup 19 times in one year, and a 28-year-old woman who went 11 times.
The idea is that with regular reminders to take medications, tips on how to manage their symptoms, even rides to psychiatrist appointments, the money spent on case managers is far less than the cost of repeatedly booking the same people into jail or committing them to a publicly funded psychiatric ward.
According to the Houston Police Department, it is working. Since the program began, run-ins between police and the top 30 chronic users have declined by 53 percent, as have the number of trips to the county psychiatric hospital, HPD officials said.
Based on that, City Council on Wednesday voted to double the program, expanding it to four case managers to keep tabs on 60 people.
…Wednesday’s unanimous vote to increase spending on the program to $256,000 this fiscal year was a formality after Councilman Ed Gonzalez, a former police officer, attached an amendment to this year’s budget to double the size of CCSI. Gonzalez said the program protects people with mental illness, the officers dispatched for crisis encounters and taxpayers’ wallets. He looked at the numbers police reported to council and said, “There’s a lot of savings in those percentages” in avoided arrests, ambulance rides and psychiatric center commitments. “That’s a much more effective and humane way of dealing with the problem,”….
(Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle)
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- SPCA Rescues Nearly 100 Mistreated Dogs From Tomball Home (KHOU 11 News)
- Civil Rights Group Sets Up Shop In Houston (KUHF Public Radio)
- DEA Busts ‘Bath Salts’ Ring (Houston Chronicle)
- Feds Accuse Houston Health Care Companies of Fraud (Houston Chronicle)
- Conroe Psychiatric Hospital May Face Big Fines (Houston Chronicle)
- Left in Need? How Obamacare & Rick Perry’s Medicaid Rejection Hit Safety-Net Clinics Like San Jose (Houston Culture Map)
STATE, NATION & BEYOND:
- Parks Dept. Seeks Corporate Partners To Help Plug Revenue Gap (KUHF Public Radio)
- TJJD Doing Blanket Review of Youths in Facilities (Texas Tribune)
- 3 More Lackland Instructors Under Investigation (Houston Chronicle)
- Colorado Hospitals Chip in for Shooting Victims’ Care (CNN)
- Capitol One to Pay $12M in Case on US Servicemen (AP)
- Medicaid Expansion May Lower Death Rates, Study Says (New York Times)
- Drought Could Cost $12 Billion, Most Since 1988 (USA Today)
- Aging AIDS Epidemic Raises New Health Questions (AP)