Why the Health Care Foundation is continuing its grant at the new jail

At first, the plan to coop up Kansas City’s low-level offenders with Jackson County’s convicted felons in the same downtown detention facility struck many community groups as a very, very bad idea. Organizations that provided mental health services, addiction treatment and outreach programming for the inmates at the Municipal Correctional Institution worried that the new jail would hinder their ability to help the city’s most-troubled population.

The most significant example of that skepticism came from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City. In 2008, the organization gave the city a $900,000 grant for a program called Bridges, which combines internal mental-health treatment with post-incarceration services. But when the city council decided to shutter MCI and move municipal inmates to Jackson County, the Foundation put the sizable grant on hold, concerned about the new set-up.

This week, the Foundation announced it will keep the money flowing. And the group’s president, Steve Roling, tells me it’s because the previously skeptical service providers are starting to trust their new partners.