AHCCCS Builds Support Behind Bars

Less than half of the people incarcerated in Arizona are serving their first prison term. In order to address this issue amid other pressures on Arizona’s legal system, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) is implementing rehabilitation programs for recently released prisoners.

The AHCCCS Behavioral Health Planning Council met virtually on Sept. 16 to discuss new plans to reinforce its mental and behavioral health efforts in Arizona. Dan Haley, CEO of Hope Incorporated, opened discussion with a presentation on his organization’s approach to behavioral health care.

 “We don’t dictate recovery, it’s not our place to tell someone how to stay clean and sober it is our place to work with folks who are working their recovery program,” Haley said as he presented on how networks like Hope Inc. and AHCCCS help to guide people into healthier lives. 

AHCCCS focuses primarily on integrated health care and looking at how it can tackle both physical and mental health for anyone and everyone in Arizona. AHCCCS collaborates with many other organizations and recruits members, like Haley, to their boards in order to further their reach in the state. Both AHCCCS and Hope Inc. are currently looking at transitional health and what that means for incarcerated Arizonans.

“Our biggest draw is our criminal justice services we provide,” Haley said. “This is a great connection to folks coming out of incarceration.” 

Haley As Haley continued on, he touched on the also discussed the importance of “life skills training” in recovery and expanded upon employees who are inserted into prisons across Arizona to help provide support and assistance upon release. 

The Community Re-Entry & Transition Team, or CRTT, utilizes its partnership with AHCCCS to help reach more incarcerated people. While AHCCCS helps to reinforce other programs that share its mission, it also has implemented its own.

Heidi Capriotti, the AHCCCS public information officer, shared insight into AHCCCS’s Targeted Investment Program.

“What targeted investments did in its first five years, was create programs through the county probation officers and behavioral health providers to co-locate behavioral health with probation officers or probation offices with behavioral health centers so that if someone was coming to see their probation officer they are much more likely to talk about what their health care needs are ,” Capriotti said. “This eliminates barriers of getting to appointments and increases the possibility of someone seeing a behavioral health care provider.”

Both programs through AHCCCS and Hope Inc. are starting points in helping to provide adequate and substantial care for those who need mental health care and are often imprisoned multiple times instead. By tackling the issue in a very precarious transitional stage, AHCCCS hopes to help stop the cycle of continuous incarceration.

Vicki Johnson, Chair of the Behavioral Health Planning Council, wrapped up the conversation around transitional behavioral health care by suggesting more research on moves to help with the “transition from the children’s system to the adult system.” 

This could lead to a stronger mental health support presence in schools to help with any issues at the start, she said.