ST. PAUL — Local officials are lobbying for a one-time appropriation from the state to fund mental health and substance abuse care at the Beltrami County Jail.
During the Minnesota Senate Judiciary and Public Safety committee hearing on Monday, March 25, bill author Sen. Bruce Anderson, R-Buffalo, introduced the proposal. It would direct a one-time grant to fund mental health and substance abuse disorder care ready to launch at the Beltrami County Jail in a partnership with Sanford, but under strain due to a lack of funding.
“Beltrami County and our partners are ready for the next steps in evolution around behavioral health,” said Anne Lindseth, the director of Beltrami County Health and Human Services, in her testimony. “We have the beginnings of a successful and sustainable behavioral health partnership, but we need funding and resources to support this full continuum of care.”
The full continuum of care is called the Ember program, which stands for embrace, motivate, believe, execute and remedy.
“Sanford Health is committed to addressing the needs of our community, which includes addressing social determinants of health, creating culturally responsive and sustainable services that are evidence based and trauma informed,” said Megan Hanson, a Sanford Health social worker.
“Over the past two years, we have been closely working with Beltrami County to develop a program to support inmates who are experiencing mental health or chemical health needs.”
Sanford Health was successful in receiving a grant in a different program to bolster mental health services, which have grown in the region in the last eight years with the expansion of Sanford Bemidji’s behavioral health unit. This includes the recent construction of an inpatient facility that also offers outpatient emergency services.
The proposal has been through the Legislature before but was line-item vetoed eight years ago by Gov. Mark Dayton. Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Chair Ron Latz acknowledged the state’s many unmet needs with mental health but posed the question of how to structure funding to meet those needs across the state.
"To me, the question becomes what model of funding should be used to meet those needs? How much state level funding, how much local level funding?” Latz asked.
Beltrami County Sheriff Jason Riggs said the legislation would expand the possibility of law enforcement being able to divert struggling people away from the criminal justice system with a co-response model.
“We would have a mental health worker, and an officer, and that’s their primary job — they ride together, they go to these calls... and rather than send this person to jail, provide them with a service outside of the jail in lieu of that consequence, to get them on the right path,” Riggs said in a March 27 phone interview.
While there is no specific dollar amount yet included on the bill, previous requests to fund programming like this were around $8 million. After the committee hearing, it was laid over to be considered for possible inclusion.
