An Advo­ca­cy Update by Kel­ly Gun­ning, Direc­tor of Advo­ca­cy and Pol­i­cy, NAMI Lexington

The 2024 Leg­isla­tive Gen­er­al Assem­bly is in full swing. We have shared many updates and alerts with you as we pass the midterm of the ses­sion. We have tried to keep you abreast so that you can com­mu­ni­cate with your elect­ed offi­cials on impor­tant, pend­ing issues before them that are sig­nif­i­cant to you, our stake­hold­ers. We are grate­ful to all of our Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ners as we strive to stay con­nect­ed and dis­sem­i­nate the huge flow of infor­ma­tion com­ing out of Frank­fort. This is a mon­u­men­tal task and wouldn’t be pos­si­ble with­out all the coali­tions work­ing together.

Some­times it feels like we are try­ing to make sense of an upside-down, inside-out world. The bud­get is the top pri­or­i­ty in this ses­sion. Ken­tucky is expe­ri­enc­ing a record bud­get sur­plus, yet we expe­ri­ence inno­v­a­tive, her­ald­ed and pro­gres­sive pro­grams being unfund­ed in HB6. One of those pro­grams that NAMI Lex­ing­ton is espe­cial­ly wor­ried about is the funds in the Governor’s bud­get for the expan­sion of Tim’s Law, Assist­ed Out­pa­tient Treat­ment for indi­vid­u­als with Seri­ous Men­tal Ill­ness, named for Tim Mor­ton, a life­long Fayette Coun­ty res­i­dent until his pre­ma­ture death on March 27, 2014, from life­long impacts to his health from chron­ic schiz­o­phre­nia. Tim was invol­un­tar­i­ly com­mit­ted to East­ern State Hos­pi­tal dozens upon dozens of times. Assist­ed Out­pa­tient Treat­ment could have been a life­sav­ing and alter­ing expe­ri­ence for Tim and all the indi­vid­u­als like him and for all the Fam­i­lies like his. The ask is for an addi­tion­al 2 mil­lion dol­lars over the next two years to expand the pro­gram to more sites in the State. This ini­tia­tive is proven to help indi­vid­u­als stay out of the revolv­ing door of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, hos­pi­tals and the street. Lead­ing instead to treat­ment com­pli­ance, recov­ery, hous­ing, employ­ment and hope – in oth­er words — to indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies being able to reclaim their lives from chaos to sus­tain­able recov­ery, sta­bil­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The “Black Robe” effect of the Judge in the pro­gram and the con­sis­tent check-in with the wrap around com­mu­ni­ty-based ser­vice providers cre­ates an envi­ron­ment of sup­port and safe­ty which keeps folks sta­ble in the Com­mu­ni­ty and saves the ‘churn and burn’ effects of a frag­ment­ed jour­ney through a dys­func­tion­al, dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate system.

Ask your leg­is­la­tors to restore the 2 mil­lion dol­lars of fund­ing for Tim’s Law in the Sen­ate ver­sion of the bud­get and to pass the increase for this life sav­ing, cost sav­ing pro­gram that was in the orig­i­nal budget.

Delv­ing fur­ther into mixed mes­sages and con­fus­ing dynam­ics there is anoth­er very con­fus­ing, irrec­on­cil­able conun­drum occur­ring in this ses­sion as well. Enact­ed in April of 2022 through pro­vi­sions of Sen­ate Bill 90 and call­ing for the estab­lish­ment of a Ken­tucky Judi­cial Com­mis­sion on Men­tal Health (KYJCMH). The Com­mis­sion, lead and appoint­ed by the Ken­tucky Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice, John Minton and chaired by Supreme Court Jus­tice, Debra Hem­bree Lam­bert and work­ing joint­ly with the Admin­is­tra­tive Office of the Courts (AOC) first met on Sep­tem­ber 20,2022. The com­mis­sion was estab­lished to explore, rec­om­mend and when applic­a­ble imple­ment trans­for­ma­tion­al changes to improve sys­temwide respons­es to jus­tice-involved indi­vid­u­als deal­ing with men­tal health issues, sub­stance use or intel­lec­tu­al disabilities.(ky.gov 2022) The com­mis­sion is designed to take into con­sid­er­a­tion the vision, val­ues and goals of a mul­ti­year assess­ment by the Ken­tucky Court of Jus­tice to enhance the prac­tice, qual­i­ty and time­li­ness of the judi­cial response to cas­es involv­ing these needs. The inau­gur­al meet­ing, host­ing 72 appoint­ed stakeholders/commissioners from many diverse van­tage points-began the jour­ney to, in Jus­tice Lambert’s words, “get Ken­tucky on the road to bet­ter men­tal health”.(ky.gov 2022)

This long over­due and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly wel­come change was high­light­ed even fur­ther by the cre­ation and host­ing of a 3‑day KJCMH Men­tal Health Sum­mit at the Galt House in Louisville May 31-June 2, 2023. This was one of the finest con­fer­ence gath­er­ings on jus­tice and men­tal health ever- with a nation­al­ly rec­og­nized, state of the art, slate of pre­sen­ters and was accom­plished with absolute­ly stel­lar exe­cu­tion by the com­mis­sion, AOC and the Cab­i­net for Health and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices. Every­one who attend­ed was incred­i­bly impressed, renewed and ener­gized by this long-await­ed approach shift in our Com­mon­wealth. Which, if put into prac­tice, would put us on plane with the best and most inno­v­a­tive prac­tices across the nation.

Or so we hoped.

On Jan­u­ary 9, 2024, instead of focus­ing on all of the momen­tum for treat­ment, inter­ven­tion and decrim­i­nal­iza­tion cre­at­ed by the KJCMH and the Men­tal Health Sum­mit we get a stag­ger­ing bill from the house, “The Safer Ken­tucky Act” HB5 — that wants to crim­i­nal­ize homelessness-(it is esti­mat­ed that around between 21–25% of home­less indi­vid­u­als are also seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill (SAMHSA 2023) and 68% of all cities report that addic­tion is the sin­gle largest cause of home­less­ness (NIH 2022). The bill seeks to arrest these indi­vid­u­als and fine them and incar­cer­ate them. It also returns to the worn-out refrain that being tougher on crime and increas­ing incar­cer­a­tion will cre­ate a “Safer Ken­tucky”, that’s exact­ly what we’ve been doing, and it obvi­ous­ly hasn’t worked so far. These issues are Pub­lic Health Issues not crim­i­nal issues!! That is why SB90 and the KJCMH came to be, to forge solu­tions. If we imple­ment HB5 we would be increas­ing our already over­whelm­ing bur­den on the Cor­rec­tions Sys­tem by pil­ing on our over-crowd­ed, and extreme­ly under­staffed jails. More­over, our Jails and pris­ons are not equipped to man­age seri­ous­ly men­tal ill and addict­ed inmates and lack the staff and resources for doing so. We can­not pun­ish our way out of Seri­ous Men­tal Ill­ness, addic­tion, pover­ty and trau­ma. Gen­er­a­tions of failed poli­cies should have taught us that. If we meet peo­ple where they are with inter­ven­tion, treat­ment and com­mu­ni­ty options we can stop the revolv­ing door to the cor­rec­tions sys­tem. We can Treat, Inter­vene, Edu­cate, Cre­ate and Inno­vate our way for­ward as a Com­mon­wealth. Let’s try that.

Ask your leg­is­la­tors to restore the fund­ing in the Med­ic­aid Bud­get for Mobile Cri­sis Services.

Ask your leg­is­la­tors to ade­quate­ly fund our Com­mu­ni­ty Men­tal Health Centers.

Ask your leg­is­la­tors to invest in afford­able hous­ing, edu­ca­tion and vio­lence pre­ven­tion programs.

Ask your leg­is­la­tors to ade­quate­ly fund DCBS so we have an appro­pri­ate lev­el of staffing to address these Pub­lic Health/Community based issues.

Ask your leg­is­la­tors to please restore mon­ey in the Judi­cia­ry Bud­get for expand­ing Men­tal Health Courts and AOC work­ers to meet the goals of the Ken­tucky Judi­cial Com­mis­sion on Men­tal Health.

Ask your leg­is­la­tors to restore fund­ing for Alter­na­tive Sen­tenc­ing Workers

Ask your Sen­a­tors to con­sid­er viable alter­na­tives to crim­i­nal­iz­ing our most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens. Ask them to Vote NO on HB5.