Thanks to a $143,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Correction and the support of the Porter County Council Tuesday evening, the Porter County Juvenile Detention Center is adding an occupational therapist to its staff July 6, who will focus on community corrections outreach.
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“We really don’t do a great job in regards to reentry into the community,” explained JDC Director Alison Cox on the need for the position. The therapist, someone who formerly worked with the department as a Rush University capstone project doctoral student, will work systemwide to assist juveniles within Juvenile Court, detention, home detention, probation, day reporting, crisis intervention and interacting with law enforcement. The therapist will be on-call 24/7.
Cox said emotional control training for the kids and being able to assess them and meet with their families will be other important services provided.
“We haven’t had a crisis intervention in our community in regards to our kids,” she told the council. “A lot of times, what these kids need is, they just need a cooling-off period.”
She said the department is partnering with The Boys & Girls Club to provide membership and leadership training for the kids. “They are leaders,” she said. “They just need that extra push and that mentoring.”
Data collection is part of the grant and will be reported back to the DOC. “It’s a first in the state,” Cox said about embedding the community corrections outreach occupational therapist. “We want to do it right.”
Council Vice President Red Stone, R-1st, asked how the department planned to advertise this resource to families and Cox explained the therapist will only be available to the juvenile detention population.
“I love this idea,” Stone said. “I just wish we could have programs like this in schools before. You shouldn’t have to go to jail” to have access to such resources.
Councilman Jeremy Rivas, D-2nd, asked about the main cause of juvenile detention in Porter County and JDAI Coordinator Chante Harden said drug possession and battery stemming from family conflicts were the main causes.
Cox thanked the DOC for hearing her department out on its needs and praised Porter-Starke for the services they’re providing juveniles at their crisis center. “They’re getting inundated,” she said. “We want these kids to change their trajectory.”
In other business, Highway Superintendent Jim Polarek gave the council the same warning he had given the Porter County Board of Commissioners earlier that morning, that the county could face a $1 million shortfall thanks to the governor’s gas tax hiatus.
“We can go into the red as long as by the end of the year we’re in the black,” he said, explaining Gov. Mike Braun has promised to make cities and counties “whole.”
Finally, the council wrapped up its meeting with a lengthy discussion with E911 Executive Director Debby Gunn, who was seeking approval to increase her budget by $144,000 to add more staff to honor a request from area police chiefs for another talk group on the airwaves to accommodate the consolidation of the Porter and Chesterton Police dispatching and the Porter County consortium.
Councilman Mike Brickner, R-At-Large, asked if the extra talk group was a need or a want, and Gunn replied, “I think it’s a want. It is not a need. They can consolidate in another talk group.”
Gunn said she would eventually like to decrease the current five talk groups the consortium operates to one, as has been successfully done in Hendricks County, which has comparable geographic size, population and call volume.
“We tried this in Porter County and it went sideways,” Rivas said.
The request died for lack of a second and Stone said he would like to bring in the sheriff and other agency chiefs to hear their thoughts. He said he thinks it’s “patently unfair” to tell Chesterton and Porter they can’t have their own talk group if they think one is necessary.
Gunn was asked how the consolidation was going. “I think it’s going better now,” she said. “I think it was an ugly, ugly path to get here. I think emotion ruled and I see how it would.”
Stone maintained his commitment to the fair treatment of Chesterton and Porter. “They’re not going to be the red-headed stepchild,” the red-headed councilman said.
Gunn pointed out that there has been “an exponential increase” in police pursuits and said one talk group would allow everyone to be on the same page and hear what’s going on.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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