Implementation – Collaborative Comprehensive Case Plans

1. Interagency Collaboration and Information Sharing

To develop CC Case Plans, lead case planners must identify the appropriate people from the agencies who will comprise the case management team for participants. The people on the case management teams should include representatives from criminal justice, behavioral health, and social service agencies to ensure that participants’ criminogenic risk and needs and behavioral health needs are addressed in a balanced manner.

Once the CC Case Plan has been established, the interagency collaboration should continue throughout the case management process. Information-sharing should occur frequently among the partnering agencies to ensure that assessment results and other important information about the participant is accurate and up to date. Written information-sharing protocols or policies should be developed that outline which information is shared by each agency and which agency receives that information.

Spotlight:

The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office did not try to start from scratch when identifying the appropriate partnering agencies for their reentry program. Instead, the sheriff looked to many of the agencies his staff had already collaborated with successfully and identified which agencies would best contribute to reentry planning and would also be most willing to help his staff manage participants’ case plans. Once those agencies were identified, he enlisted the help of local experts in criminal justice and behavioral health to make sure the program would adequately address participants’ criminogenic risk and needs and behavioral health needs.

Resources:

2. Staff Training

To help participants reduce their risk of recidivating and advance their goals for recovery, all members of the case management team should be trained on the Risk-Need-Responsivity model and behavioral health recovery principles and should learn how to use that information to develop participants’ case plans. Partnering agencies should use cross-training opportunities to help staff bridge any knowledge gaps and maximize the impact of training.

Spotlight:

Bridgeway Recovery Services, the behavioral health care provider for Marion County (Oregon’s) Reentry Initiative, offers and facilitates trainings on behavioral health and other relevant topics that their staff and officers and staff at the Marion County Sheriff’s Department can attend. This opportunity for cross training helps the sheriff’s department maximize its budget, but also allows the staff at both agencies to interact with and learn from each other.

3. Screening and
Assessment

Agencies should use validated criminogenic risk, substance use disorder, and mental illness screenings and assessments to choose which participants are placed in reentry and diversion programs and to help them develop these participants’ case plans. Once the appropriate people in the partnering agencies have participants’ assessment results, they should incorporate this information into their case plans, and the results should inform the priorities of the case plan.

Staff from the lead case planning agency who work directly with participants should continue to monitor these participants for the duration of the program so they can adjust the case plan based on participants’ progress and status changes.

Resources:

4. Case Conference Procedures

Because multiple people and agencies will be involved in managing participants’ case plans, case conferences can help the people on the participants’ case management teams identify the available services to address their criminogenic, behavioral health, and psychosocial needs and prioritize those needs that are most critical to participants’ reentry success.

Lead case planners should regularly have case conferences with participants and their case management teams to discuss any changes in participants’ needs or goals that might require adjustments to their reentry or diversion programming. To ensure these case conferences occur regularly and are most useful to participants, lead case planners should develop case conference procedures for each participant during the early stages of planning and make sure those mutually agreed-upon procedures are carried out in the case planning process. These procedures should encompass the manner in which the case conferences will be conducted, how often they will be conducted, and what information each partner is expected to bring to the case conferences. For people involved in family-based treatment, it is important to include family and other members of the participants’ support systems in the case planning process.

Resources:

Developing a Mental Health Court: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum (module 6: Case Planning)
Engaging in Collaborative Partnerships to Support Reentry
Engaging Stakeholders in Your Project

5. Participant Engagement

Lead case planners must ensure that participants and the people in their support system are actively involved in the development of their case plans. When participants are activity engaged, they are more likely to feel a sense of ownership over their programming and are more invested in their own recovery.

When participants and people in their support system are included in the case planning process early on, lead case planners can also better incorporate the five remaining components into their case plans and help keep them fully engaged in the reentry or diversion programming. Engaging family and support systems in this process can help to increase motivation toward goal attainment and treatment completion.

Family-based treatment can be an effective intervention model for people in the criminal justice system. If a participant engages in family-based treatment, the lead case planner should also include family members (i.e., whomever the person identifies as family) in the case planning process, which can support participant motivation. Case plan goals should be customized to the individual and their efforts toward family reunification and stability.

Spotlight:

Some lead case planners use peer mentors to help keep participants actively involved in their reentry programming. Bridgeway Recovery Services uses peer mentors to conduct weekly mentoring groups with participants while they are still incarcerated. After participants are released from prison, the peer mentors also spend the first day of release with participants to help connect them to resources (i.e., linkages to affordable housing options, referrals to medical care, and assistance in getting their government-issued identification reinstated).

Resources:

6. Prioritized Needs
and Goals

Most participants will have multiple needs to address in their reentry or diversion programming, so lead case planners should prioritize addressing those needs that help decrease participants’ risk of recidivism, improve their health, and ensure public safety.

Lead case planners can use participants’ criminogenic and behavioral health assessment results, as well as psychosocial information (i.e., information on their mental health and social well-being including housing status, employment and education history, and health insurance) to determine which needs should be prioritized and have a greater chance of being addressed through targeted interventions. Lead case planners should also help participants develop goals for their case plans that are based on these identified needs. Participants are more likely to succeed when their own goals are directly related to these needs.

Resources:

7. Responsivity

To incorporate responsivity principles into case plans, criminal justice and behavioral health professionals must adapt services and treatment to address each person’s unique characteristics and barriers to learning. Lead case planners should use the results from criminogenic, behavioral health, and psychosocial assessments to determine which tailored interventions can help participants based on these individual characteristics and how those characteristics can impact the effectiveness of participants’ treatment.

Lead case planners should include participants’ general and specific responsivity considerations in the case plan and adapt treatment to reflect their individual limits and barriers. For general responsivity, social learning and cognitive behavioral interventions (such as Interactive Journaling or Moral Reconation Therapy) are used to address participants’ dynamic risk factors. For specific responsivity, lead case planners consider participants’ culture, motivations, strengths, gender, and learning styles when developing service, supervision, and treatment approaches.

8. Legal Information

Lead case planners should ask partner agencies for any legal information (such as court dates, conditions of supervision, and child custody orders) that might impact participants’ supervision plans, conditions of release, court participation requirements, treatment approaches, interventions, or access to housing, employment, or other programs. This information should be included in participants’ case plans and shared with the appropriate people in the participants’ case management team so they can support participants in activities such as appearing in court when required, attending community supervision appointments, complying with child custody orders, or finding affordable housing post incarceration.

9. Participant
Strengths

One effective way to keep participants engaged in their reentry or diversion programming is to identify personal strengths, such as employment experience or family support, that can aid in their success. Lead case planners should account for these personal strengths (also known as protective factors) when developing case plans and ensure that participants are engaged in evidence-based programming that can build on those strengths and reduce their chances of recidivating.

Spotlight:

Probation officers in San Joaquin County’s Probation Department (the lead case planner for their collaboration) develop participants’ reentry plans in coordination with that participant and his or her family, clinician, and case manager. By engaging participants and the people in their support systems early on, probation officers can get participants to think about their own personal strengths that will help them succeed in achieving their reentry and recovery goals.

10. Gender Considerations

Women often have different behavioral health needs and responsivity factors than men, so lead case planners or one of their partner agencies should utilize gender-responsive approaches to help women develop goals related to their specific needs. These approaches can help agencies ensure that risk and behavioral health screening and assessments tools, case management processes, and programming are effective for women in the justice system.

Some examples of considerations that can negatively impact women’s reentry success are child custody issues, financial challenges, and past trauma. Women are more likely to be engaged in their programming when lead case planners incorporate gender-responsive services into case plans and ensure those results are reflected in their reentry or diversion programming.

Resources:

Priorities and Components to Implementing CC Case Plans