The Five County Stepping Up initiative has been working in Vance County since 2015 to help people suffering from mental illness or substance abuse disorders who find themselves in jail or detained because of their health challenges.
Stepping Up is a national movement, with almost half of North Carolina’s 100 counties participating, including the counties that team with Vance – Granville, Warren, Franklin and Halifax – to create the Five County collaborative.
At their Sept. 22 work session, Granville-Vance Public Health Director Lisa Harrison gave Vance County commissioners an overview of its progress and a projection for how the group plans to continue making gains over the next five years.
Simply put, Stepping Up isn’t a program in and of itself, Harrison said. It’s a framework that creates connections for both service providers and those who find themselves either headed to jail, in jail or ready to be released.
In her presentation to commissioners, Harrison shared sobering statistics about mental illness, substance use disorder and people who find themselves in the judicial system.
More than two-thirds of jail detainees have a substance use disorder, and another 17 percent of the jail population has a serious mental illness. Three-quarters of those with a serious mental illness also have a substance use disorder.
The toll these health challenges have on individuals can be staggering, but there are economic consequences, too. It costs more to house detainees with these conditions – 50 percent more than someone without mental illness or substance use disorder.
Stepping Up helps people stay out of jail and return to jail less frequently by connecting resources with people who need them.
Access to appropriate services could mean someone doesn’t get in trouble with the law, so Stepping Up serves as a diversion tool. But a person who finds himself in detention may need a plan for when he’s released so he doesn’t go back into the system. That works to lower the recidivism rate.
“Jails have become crisis facilities,” Harrison said, adding that detainees rarely receive the treatment they truly need once they’re behind bars.
Nationally, inmates with addictions stay longer in jail, she observed.
“We know this is an issue we’d like to address.”
While Stepping Up doesn’t provide direct service, Harrison said it works to “connect the dots” among service providers and community resources so they can be as effective as possible.
“We want to make sure we reduce the number of people in jails with substance abuse,” she said.
Ways to do that include promoting crisis response efforts, working within the judicial system and supporting individuals through the re-entry process.
Stepping Up uses something called the Sequential Intercept Model approach which has four shared goals that include increasing connection to appropriate services, shortening time in jail, reducing recidivism and improving data collection systems.
The regional group meets quarterly, bringing more than 30 or so to the table to share successes and best practices, as well as to help solve problems.
The individual county groups also meet, in alternate months, to work on things more specific to their own needs.
Over the next five years, Stepping Up has identified five priorities:
- expand diversion and crisis response
- improve continuity of care and re-entry
- advance data and evaluation capacity
- strengthen workforce and trauma-informed systems
- expand youth and prevention strategies
Find out more about Stepping Up at www.gvph.org and review the slide presentation Harrison shared with commissioners online at https://www.vancecounty.org/departments/board-of-commissioners/agenda/ and click on Sept. 22, 2026 Work Session.
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