Commissioners agree to fund needs assessment

“I would like see us keep moving forward,” said Commissioner Ron Lee, who two years ago began working with Jim Courter toward developing a facility to help county residents overcome drug addiction.

“We have got a new jail coming but we don’t want to fill it up” with people there due to narcotics related arrests, Lee said. “This is going to be a way to help these people rehab somehow somewhere. I just think it’s vital and heavily needed in our community. I think the needs assessment is going to show that but we’ve got to do the steps. I’m all for it.”

Jason Cranney, executive director of Jefferson County Court Services, emphasized that approval of the needs assessment is not an indication of whether a residential treatment facility will be built. “This is not me requesting to the Commissioners to build a residential facility. We’re not even to that point,” he said, adding the request was only “to get permission to do the needs assessment.

“What the needs assessment recommends, we won’t know until it’s completed,” Cranney said. “At that point this is just the pre-steps to be able to consider whether a residential facility would even be appropriate” while also considering “what would be the best treatment and size of that facility if they do recommend it. They are also going to be looking at other gaps in services for our community, whether that be transitional housing, halfway houses, outpatient treatment, medical assistance treatment, and then make recommendations on which one of those would be appropriate for our county.”

The University of Cincinnati offered to conduct two levels of needs assessments. A basic needs assessment at a cost of $15,000 would focus primarily on reviewing and analyzing existing secondary data sources that already exist while attaining limited stakeholder and subject-matter expert input and recommendations. A comprehensive needs assessment would cost $25,000 and provide a broader reach that would include focus group discussions, additional interviews with key stakeholders and multiple presentations.

After further discussion, Cranney noted that UC officials said “we could essentially make our own packet out of their services and it would end up somewhere in between those two price points.”

However, Cranney expects the cost will end up closer to $25,000 than $15,000 because they want to learn more about existing gaps in services.

“They were very flexible in being sure that we had every question wanted answered to be answered,” he said.

Cranney said that any portion of the $25,000 not used can be rolled over for “implementing our next steps” after the needs assessment.

Although Jefferson County will be the main focus of the needs assessment, Cranney noted that surrounding counties will also be included — especially those counties that also don’t have residential treatment facilities.

“They made it very clear in the studies that they’ve had, if you just look at just our county then it’s not realistic.” For example, he said if a residential treatment facility is built in Jefferson County, there would likely also be patients coming from other neighboring counties that are under served in that area.