Floyd County ponders ‘Stepping Up’ to keep mentally ill from jails

Floyd County ponders ‘Stepping Up’ to keep mentally ill from jails

The Floyd County Social Service Board of Directors likely will sign on with an initiative seeking to reduce the number of people with mental illnesses in county jails. Whether the County Board of Supervisors will also sign on was a question raised at its workshop meeting on Monday.

The initiative calls for “sharing lessons learned with other counties in Iowa and across the county.” It also calls for developing a plan and ways to track progress.

“Each year, there are an estimated 2 million people with serious mental illnesses admitted to jails across the nation,” the initiative’s website, stepuptogether. org, says in explaining the problem it means to address. “The human toll of this problem—and its cost to taxpayers—is staggering.”

—Chris Baldus