The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved $282,613 to cover staffing positions and overhead related to the county’s implementation of a state-mandated program intended to help people with serious mental illnesses, including untreated schizophrenia.

Sonoma and Napa counties are among the 50 counties due to implementation Court of CARE by December 1st. They will join eight counties – Glenn, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Los Angeles – that have already launched the program since its inception two years ago.

The Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) court program is designed as a non-criminal process in which certain people, including family members and first responders, can petition a civil court treatment, services, and housing resources for people with untreated schizophrenia and other psychotics. troubles.

The funding, which the board unanimously approved Tuesday, will cover a full-time behavioral health clinician specialist and a full-time senior customer support specialist within the health services department.

“It really requires counties to focus heavily on who qualifies,” Supervisor James Gore said, before giving examples of people the program could cover. “Homeless (people) with high needs to some extent, very difficult mental health, behavioral health and substance abuse issues. The hardest to reach and largest users.

The program was led in 2022 by Governor Gavin Newsom to address some of the state’s most persistent and related problems involving chronic homelessness, prison overcrowding, substance abuse and serious mental illness.

The CARE court process would begin with a petition and include a clinical assessment to determine eligibility, followed by the creation of a care plan – if the person is eligible – which may include recommended treatment, medications and housing. The person’s participation in the plan and the county’s delivery of services would then be monitored for a year through court hearings.

The program sets out seven criteria to determine whether a person is eligible for CARE Court, including: being 18 years of age and older with a diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic disorders; the person is not clinically stabilized within the framework of continuous and voluntary treatment; and the person is unlikely to be able to care for themselves safely and independently.

Implementation of CARE Court will require coordination among multiple county departments, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Public Defender’s Office. Sonoma County officials responsible for implementing the program were meeting since January 25 to prepare.

Jennifer Solito, interim director of county health services, said Tuesday that the county does not expect an immediate, massive demand for the program when it launches.

“For the counties that have already implemented CARE Court, it hasn’t been the onslaught of new cases like it might have been,” Solito said. “We think the rollout will be quite slow because people understand that it’s an option, it’s a voluntary option.”

Sonoma County could see as many as 40 CARE court petitions in the first year, based on eligible Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) guardianships and misdemeanor cases in which defendants are declared incompetent to stand trial, according to a staff report released before the board meeting.

Solito said the Department of Health Services plans to brief the board on how the program will work in 2025.

You can reach staff writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or [email protected]. On Twitter @MurphReports.