A plan several years old to get a jail transition center off the ground in Blount County has a new lease on life, courtesy of money from opioid lawsuits and the state of Tennessee.
Millions of dollars from the state and from legal settlements made with opioid sellers will help nonprofits and government offices in Blount County expand their drug use disorder and mental illness treatment and support services.
A major part of that expansion will be a suite of transition facilities built to aid people with such diseases who are leaving the county jail. Staff at the nonprofit McNabb Center recently applied to the state for, and were granted, around $6 million in funding to support those efforts.
Right now, a part of McNabb’s plan rests on a decision set for Tuesday, April 2. Members of a committee that’s historically dealt with corrections issues — the county’s CARES committee — will vote on sending the Blount County Board of Commissioners a new proposal “conveying” between 3.5 and 5 acres of government-owned land near the Bungalow community of Maryville and advancing the grant funds to McNabb. If they do so, they’ll be turning over to McNabb a small part of a location the county previously designated for its own planned transition center.
The draft resolution before the committee reads, “The McNabb Center will have contracts to operate services in the facilities being constructed into the future. Capital maintenance as well as services are budgeted for substance use treatment, mental health supports, and recovery housing/recovery supports.”
County tax dollars won’t be used for the project, according to the draft resolution.
Past reporting from The Daily Times states that early proposals for a transition center encompassed public-private partnerships between the county and organizations like McNabb; this new proposal would represent a private venture from McNabb, if the government land is transferred.
The transition center is a major part of local leaders’ attempt to improve treatment options for people with drug use disorders and mental illness. People with those disorders often experience both mental illness and drug use disorders simultaneously, legal and clinical care leaders told the newspaper, and tailoring support to address both sets of issues is a priority with the expanded programming.
And in addition to the transition center, other projects fueled by opioid settlement dollars include expansion of the offerings provided by the Blount County Journey Court, which is meant to support children at high risk of being removed from their parents’ custody — either into foster care or juvenile justice custody.
Transition center
Money for the new services stems partially from settlements made after Tennessee, some of its local governments and other states, sued opioid sellers and manufacturers. The governments cite the people who became addicted to opioids, as well as people who died overdosing on them, as among the harms caused by such businesses.
A February report from the Tennessee Department of Health says opioids “have consistently played a role in drug overdose deaths among TN Residents.” The report adds that opioids “were involved,” to some degree, in 3,073 overdose deaths in 2022.
Negotiation ultimately led to settlement agreements with companies including Food City, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart.
The transition center idea itself dates back years; it came to prominence as the county jail faced tight conditions, with a burgeoning inmate population leading it to fail state inspections. The Blount County Mayor’s office broached the topic of overcrowding at the local jail repeatedly, including in 2015, 2018 and 2019.
Officials cited space concerns — as well as high rates of recidivism among people charged with crimes — as one reason to build a facility intended to help inmates arrested on nonviolent charges recover and resume their old lives on a sounder footing.
A 2019 proposal for a transition center totaled $29 million and a prospective site, which the county still owns, amounted to 63 acres of land.
The crowd at the jail today is much smaller. Rated for 350 inmates, Blount County’s jail had an inmate population of 327 as of the state’s most recently published report, from February. But there remains a need for another way to improve issues such as drug addiction and mental illness, legal and clinical leaders told The Daily Times.
McNabb Center’s Director of Blount County services Shannon Dow told The Daily Times in a phone interview Thursday that her organization is eager to provide supportive services to those in Blount County who need them. Most of the population to be served by the transition center would be men, she said, but women would also receive treatment.
Plans for the possible campus are in the early stages, she said, but encompass some housing — four houses containing 30 beds — for men with “co-occurring” mental illness and substance use disorders. Funds for the four houses — totaling $1,550,000 — stem from Tennessee’s Opioid Abatement Council, which approved the grant to McNabb on March 18.
Serving children, families
Other organizations also hope to use funds stemming from opioid settlements to improve Blount Countians’ health. The Blount County Journey Court — a specialty juvenile court established to work with children at high risk of being moved into foster care or juvenile justice custody — received a $220,000 award from the state’s opioid abatement council earlier in March as well.
The grant proposal involved a partnership with McNabb that would see the court target some new areas of difficulty.
“We are thrilled to be the recipients of this grant,” Blount County Juvenile Court Judge Kenlyn Foster told the newspaper Thursday. “What we had found in our experience in Blount County is that there was a gap in services,” she said.
That gap is the absence of intensive, outpatient services for adolescents dealing with mental illnesses or drug use disorders, she said.
“Very often, insurance doesn’t pay for residential treatment for more than a few weeks to 30 days,” she said. Young people in outpatient treatment need to travel to Knoxville for care, she noted, and if parents can’t take their children to that treatment, the situation can become more difficult, as Blount County lacks its own public transportation. Children who needed care could take a bus with the East Tennessee Human Resource Agency, but doing so could take hours and require them to miss school credit.
“They’re still falling behind in those classes,” she said. “It just becomes this big snowball of problems.” Finding a way to address multiple aspects of the issues faced by adolescents in the court, she said, was necessary.
Through the planned partnership with McNabb, she said, she hopes to more closely target areas including wraparound services for not only children, but also their families.
“Let’s say a family is struggling, because a lot of times, it’s generational — we can provide services through McNabb to help them through this,” she said of the grant proposal.
“We’re trying to put all hands on deck to provide support for the child and for the family,” she said.
Other entities in the East Tennessee region that were awarded community funds stemming from opioid settlements include the Mental Health Association of East Tennessee and the University of Tennessee Medical Center Bridge to Recovery.
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