Los Angeles Superior Court officials Wednesday unveiled a website providing information and details on the county’s upcoming start of the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act, or CARE Court, program that allows individuals to petition a court to provide treatment for people suffering from mental illness.
The CARE Court program, which is already operating in seven California counties, including Orange and San Diego, is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles County on Dec. 1, one year earlier than originally planned.
The website, www.lacourt.org/care, provides details of the program and information on how the system works.
“By providing residents access to this information early, we hope to empower our communities with knowledge of how the CARE Court process may provide vulnerable individuals suffering from severe mental health disorders the care they need, and deserve, to stabilize and succeed,” Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Samantha P. Jessner said in a statement.
The CARE Court program was approved by the state Legislature last year. It allows eligible people — including relatives, first responders, health care providers and mental health experts — to petition a court to order care services and housing for individuals suffering from mental health issues.
To be eligible for the CARE Court, a person must be:
— 18 years of age or older;
— diagnosed with a disorder within the “schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders” class of disorders and currently experiencing symptoms;
— not clinically stabilized in ongoing treatment; and
— the individual’s mental health is substantially deteriorating, and they are unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision and/or they need services and support to prevent relapse and deterioration.
People who enter the CARE Court system can eventually receive services such as mental health care, housing and other support for a maximum of two years, with periodic review hearings scheduled to go over the case.
The subjects of the petitions will be provided with legal representation. Some critics of the program have suggested that people targeted by the petitions could be unwillingly forced into care or ultimately into conservatorships. But proponents contend the alternative is for people to sink deeper into mental illness and potentially die living on the streets.
Los Angeles Superior Court will initially hold CARE Court proceedings at the Norwalk Courthouse, but the operation is expected to eventually move to a more centralized location.
I’m not petitioning anything or anyone. It’s not my job to keep the streets clean of vagrants. It’s the job of our ejected officials.
This criteria is highly subjective, and very likely to be Weaponized against political dissidents. I am disturbed by the lack of learning from the last three years, when people asserting their God-given right to decline experimental medical procedures were unilaterally smeared as threats to public health and to themselves.
50% of zoomer aged girls have a mental disorder that could fall under this meaningless criteria. The rule of thumb for policy is that if the government can abuse it, it will. People are so short sighted, constantly reacting to manufacture problems, eroding our civil liberties.
While the intention of this Care Court appears appears well meaning, there remain an absence of facilities and structure for these folks to return to some type of normalcy. Medications are not the answer but an environmental change coupled with proper treatment may be more successful. I have offered similar ideas to Weho Queens remedy in the desert. A boot camp of sorts with all the requisite treatment. Otherwise there will likely be little measurable progress and the program has a change of being labeled another expensive band aid.
Intended to have been worded: Change in Environment Needed….
Sounds like a step in the right direction. We need to be able to place people in facilities to get the care they desperately need even when the individual is not in their right mind, and need somebody to advocate for them.
What a waste of money. The mentally ill don’t want help. We need to move them out of the city and far into the desert, and take care of them there.
100%