As Secretary Friedlander and Director Hovland.

I traveled around the state before the debate was kicking off.

Transportation came up at every city we visited.

That along with recovery housing.

One of the things my office has done is granted money to the Department of Corrections.

And we said anybody who is on probation and parole and needs a ride to a job appointment to a treatment appointment, we'll provide that.

We've expanded that to the Department for Public Advocacy, and they're sentencing alternative sentencing workers.

A lot of times they can get a judge to agree to an opportunity to go to treatment.

We have to get them there so that that program's been pretty successful.

We started it right before COVID, so we shut down for about a year and a half.

But it's been going good now.

And you're right, we've got to find some more solutions to this transportation issue.

Thank you.

In the Medicaid program, which does not serve everyone.

But we have made things hopefully easier in terms of being able to access that transportation.

What we've done is we've said we used to say you couldn't use it for methadone treatments.

We've taken that away.

We used to say if there was a car somewhere in the family that you couldn't access, the transportation piece is, well, what if somebody is going to a job?

What if the car doesn't work?

So that we have tried to make access a really important point for what we do?

We partnered with the General Assembly on like when an ambulance goes out or first responder of that type goes out.

Instead of forcing them to take somebody to a hospital.

We are now working on allowing them to maybe do a little treatment where they are if they have that skill set.

And then as well as not necessarily taking somebody to a hospital but taking somebody to treatment.

And hopefully, as we get that more fully implemented, that will be helpful.

But it is around the Medicaid population and we have so much more to do.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So we also have the mobile crisis units, which we are funding.

And that takes treatment directly to the the person in need.

So we do have some pretty robust programs that are in the process of being funded.

Senate Bill 90 we mentioned earlier is that pilot that gets individuals straight into treatment or housing or I mean it's it's a pretty comprehensive program.

And so that's being piloted across the state right now.

So we we do have quite a few programs that are addressing transportation.