Carbon County has officially kicked off an initiative that will help people in the criminal justice system who battle mental health issues.

On Thursday, the county commissioners heard from Jared Soto, the county’s new caseworker/social worker for the Stepping Up Initiative. Soto has been tasked with getting the program set up since he started the job on May 23.

Soto said that through a $100,000 grant the county received, he is working to identify individuals who have mental health struggles within some aspect of the criminal justice system and will divert them to programs to get the help they need.

“The initiative comes with the goals of reducing the number of people in jail with mental health concerns, increasing connections to treatment, reducing the length of time spent in jail for those individuals and reducing the chance of overall recidivism,” he said.

He is currently receiving referrals from the county public defender’s office, adult probation and the jail, and is looking to see how he could expand this within the police departments in the county.

“We’re trying to work on learning more about the processes and programs inside the jail to support consumers after their intake, while they are in jail, and along with resources to help them acclimate back into the community,” Soto said.

Based on the assessments, Soto said the program will see what services they are and what are needed to help an individual and use a sequential intercept model to see what level of service the person needs.

The model has six steps that people can work through as they move through the system.

Intercept zero is community service or crisis intervention. Intercept one goes into law enforcement response, intercept two goes into initial court hearings, intercept three is in the jail, intercept four is reentry and intercept five is community corrections.

“The sequential intercept model is a model to advance community based solutions for justice involved people with mental and substance abuse disorders,” Soto said.

In short term, Soto hopes to examine what resources are out there and figure out what needs to be set up to get this initiative off the ground; while long term, he hopes this will provide another seamless resource for various law enforcement and court agencies to provide the help these individuals need to reintegrate back into society and not reoffend.

Carbon County was awarded a state grant in the amount of $108,464 in March through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency for this initiative. It aims to provide crisis management and pretrial diversion by supporting a salary for a part-time social worker/case manager and for a psychologist to perform evaluations on individuals in the criminal justice system who have been identified as having mental health issues.