Florida Partners in Crisis

Mission

Florida Partners in Crisis promotes state and community collaboration across the mental health, substance abuse and criminal justice systems to reduce contact of people with mental illnesses and substance use disorders with the justice system and support their recovery

Goals

Florida Partners in Crisis strives to achieve the following goals:

1. Promoting education and fostering awareness of mental illnesses and/or substance use disorders and effective treatments
2. Advocating for appropriate and adequate resources for prevention, care, treatment and follow-up services for those who have a mental illness and/or substance use disorder
3. Encouraging community collaboration to promote and implement best practices around effective police response, jail diversion, court intervention programs and re-entry programs that reduce the criminalization for those who have a mental illness and/or substance use disorder
4. Encouraging accountability of providers across systems

Activities

Education activities are designed to foster awareness of mental illnesses and/or substance use disorders and the needs for an improved system of care. This is accomplished through the distribution of reports, surveys, statistics and data to lawmakers, policy makers, key community leaders and the general public.

Advocacy activities revolve around community and state forums, press conferences, media contact, testimonies and distribution of literature.

Technical Assistance activities include assisting communities in building effective community collaborations for strategic system changes and assisting communities in the development and implementation of Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT).

Best Practice Summits/Conferences activities are designed to bring communities together to share and exchange knowledge and information about best practice programs and initiatives around effective jail diversion, court intervention and re-entry.