30-01-2025
Jailer: Grant will help released inmates receive medical care
Leaving prison can be as stressful an experience as it is joyful — there are a lot of considerations that go into starting one's life over, including finding the right doctor.
The Pulaski County Detention Center is aware of that, and with the help of the Pulaski County Fiscal Court, is trying to take that item off the to-do list of its departing inmates.
Jailer Anthony McCollum introduced the Fiscal Court on Tuesday to Tracey Antle, Chief Operating Officer for Cumberland Family Medical Center, a federally qualified health center with offices in Russell County and a coverage scope of several counties, including Pulaski.
Antle informed the court that Cumberland Family Medical Center had the opportunity to apply for a grant last summer that would allow them to provide transitional services for detainees as they leave the detention center, in the 90 days prior to their release.
'We're not coming into the jail to replace anything they're already doing; they're already doing a great job, they already have a really strong reentry program,' said Antle. 'This grant would just allow us to help those folks reenter the community more successfully by making sure that when they get out they have a doctor that they can go to.
'A lot of times, you leave a detention center and you're getting your medications for your diabetes or your heart disease or whatever you may have ... and you leave (and) you don't have a doctor anymore,' she added. 'You know how hard it is to make an appointment at a doctor's office sometimes. So we want to work with those folks to make sure that as they leave, they can — the very day, even — come into a clinic somewhere and get the medications they need to be healthy.'
Antle said Cumberland Family will also help connect those leaving the detention center with any mental health treatments they may need, including family counseling and substance abuse counseling.
According to information provided by Cumberland Family Medical Center in a release, studies show that as many as 80% of individuals released from incarceration have either or both chronic medical and substance use conditions. Nearly half of those entering incarceration meet the criteria for having a substance use disorder and struggle to access and afford medication assisted and other substance use disorder treatments upon release.
There is no billing for anything, said Antle, and the service comes at no cost to the jail or county as a result of the grant, known as the Quality Improvement Fund- Transitions in Care for Justice-Involved Population award, funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via the Health Resources and Services Administration.
The goal is 'to see if we can take these folks as they leave incarceration and help them make a more seamless transition back into the community through jobs, through health care, through behavioral health ... whatever their needs are, to make them return to the community more quickly, more safely, and in a more productive manner.'
The fiscal court approved the Memorandum of Understanding needed to help the deal go through. The detention center will provide space for a program director along with other providers that will be coming and going.
The two-year grant can be renewed after that period, and can be terminated with a 60 day notice.
'This pays the full salary and the full benefit package of the employee we already had doing it, so I think it's a win-win for the county,' said McCollum.
'I try to put a lot of emphasis on our reentry programs for the inmates, to get them educated as far as having a GED or some type of diploma, or something to where they can enter the work force once they're released from the detention center,' added the jailer to the fiscal court.
Also at the fiscal court meeting on Tuesday, the court approved an updated electrical inspector ordinance upon its second reading. The ordinance adds in a $25 permit fee that inspectors had been charging but wasn't in the previous version of the ordinance, and the court also approved four new electrical inspectors to work on behalf of the county.
'We had to re-do the ordinance which hadn't been done since 2017,' Pulaski County Judge-Executive Marshall Todd explained to the Commonwealth Journal. 'The electrical inspectors that we had at a time, one is going into semi-retirement and the other is already gone away, so we were down an inspector for the county basically, so we had to revisit and update the ordinance, and then we had to clarify ... at least one fee on the fee structure, which the county doesn't get, it just goes to the electrical inspectors themselves.'
The four inspectors approved included Jackie Spears of Wayne County, McCreary County's Larry Strunk, Lincoln County's Michael Ledger, and Ron Ebling locally.
Also approved by the court was a resolution authorizing the completion and filing of a Government Resources Accelerating Needed Transformation Program project application for up to $50,000 to help with a community development block grant housing project.
Back in September, the court passed the original resolution to help the Lake Cumberland Area Development District move ahead with the purchase of 86 apartment units in Pulaski County, over four different complexes. With a total project cost of $600,000, the first resolution covered $540,000 of that in federal funds, and the new resolution covers all but $10,000 of the remainder, and there's a solution for that too.
'They've already been awarded a $10,000 pre-development cost grant,' said Todd. 'It's a 4 % match. So all the $600,000 is now approved.'
Some of the existing apartment units to be acquired and refurbished for eventual use by low-income seniors will be located on Hail Knob Road and on University Drive, as well as another location. The non-profit Ezekial Foundation will be the owner of the facilities, but the project's funding is going through Lake Cumberland Area Development District offices. Pulaski County Government is serving as a pass-through agency for the grant.
