LANSING – Health and law enforcement professionals are increasingly recognizing the importance of innovative mental health jail diversion programs, working to implement them in their own counties with state and local funds.

The Department of Health and Human Services will fund expansion of jail diversion efforts in January 2016 through Gov. Rick Snyder’s Mental Health Diversion Council. The program will award about $1.2 million in total to two new agency projects and current pilot projects.

Steven Mays, the diversion administrator at the department said, said this year’s program will be a little different from previous years’.

To give agencies enough support and time to establish their programs, the council will continue to fund existing projects instead of a large number of new ones, Mays said.

It will add only two new pilot projects funding for two years instead of one. The council will also work with a data evaluation team at Michigan State University to track the progress of the pilot programs.

“The main goal is to divert as many folks out of the jails as possible, and if they’re in jail, to intervene with them very quickly,” Mays said.

Programs geared toward jail staff would help them recognize signs of inmates’ mental health problems instead of punishing them for insubordination and extending their stay, Mays said.

He also said mentally ill inmates released from jail need treatment so they don’t suffer in the community or end up back behind bars.

Mental health courts are emerging as an important treatment and support resource for defendants with severe mental illnesses, developmental disabilities and substance abuse problems, said Heather Wiegand, access and corrections supervisor in jail diversion services at Health West in Muskegon.

Unique and relatively new to the state are juvenile mental health courts, which are part of the jail diversion services at Health West, Wiegand said.

For both adults and juveniles with mental illnesses, Wiegand said such specialized courts have an important impact on jail diversion.

“In adult courts, it is huge for people with severe mental illness who are offered treatment options versus being in the jail system,” Wiegand said. “With families, it provides the opportunity of being supported and swaying them away from the criminal justice system.”