To ensure people involved with the Kentucky court system get the resources they need.

The Administrative Office of the courts has created behavioral health liaisons.

They serve as connectors for those dealing with mental health struggles, substance abuse, and intellectual and developmental disabilities.

So when looking at state courts nationally, what we saw with Kentucky is there was a gap in serving people with the justice system that once somebody came, justice involved.

It was hard to navigate the system or connect them to the appropriate resource.

And the behavioral health liaisons connect individuals so that they don't fall through the cracks in our court system.

So within communities, behavioral health liaisons have the ability to provide more access to programs, resources, and services.

We're connected widely with serving the Office of Statewide Programs, which would include family and juvenile services, along with pretrial services, working really closely with the community health centers within each community.

Also navigating jail services and opportunities within the jail.

So most of the people that we are assisting are looking for either mental health services, substance abuse services, housing, food, parenting classes, those type of services that are difficult to find if you're not within the court system or you're a community partner.

The role is as involved as the need at the individual.

This could be as small as just linking a person to the appropriate person through a phone number.

It can also be as large as walking a person through the entire process, which could mean connecting them to the individual, following up with individual to ensure that the services were made or the appointment was attended.

The ultimate goal of our treatment courts, which include drug court, mental health court and veterans treatment court, or to serve a population that is vulnerable that needs additional support in lieu of prison.

If we don't assist these individuals, who's going to and we provide wraparound services, we treat the whole person.

So we provide treatment and look at how they can be more successful in our community.