Budget Committee Looking To Approve TN ROCS Program Study Contract

The Cocke County Budget Committee will be meeting on Monday, July 12th….that meeting being held at the Chancery Courtroom at 4pm. One of the items on the agenda will be to approve the operation agreement between Cocke County and Rulo Strategies in regards to the TN-ROCS program. The County is looking at partnering with a company called American Institutes For Research or AIR along with Rulo Strategies to conduct a high quality, independent validation of the TN ROCS program to guide the county in ongoing and future expansion efforts regarding the ROCS program.

ROCS stands for Recovery Oriented Compliance Strategy—serves drug offenders who have an urgent need for treatment but who are not considered at a high enough risk to qualify for time and resource-intensive Drug Recovery Court programs. ROCS participants are partnered with criminal justice liaisons who perform clinical assessments and draw up behavioral health treatment plans for them. These plans often consist of things like intensive outpatient therapy and medication-assisted treatment. TN ROCS participants then meet regularly with corrections officers who check that they are adhering to the standards of those treatment plans. The program usually takes about 2 years for participants to complete.

In the agreement with Cocke County, AIR will collect and analyze data from three neighboring counties who adopted the TN ROCS program in 2014…those counties being Jefferson, Sevier and Grainger. This will be a 2 year study and the county will pay around $65,000 for that study if approved during the meeting on Monday.