Newsom threatens counties over CARE Court

from Richard ProctorCalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Frustrated by the slow uptake of one of his signature efforts to get Californians with severe mental illness off the streets, Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened Monday to pull funding from counties he says aren’t doing enough.

Newsom called out 10 counties that he said are not performing well when it comes to CARE Court – a program he started in 2023 that uses the courts to get people into mental health treatment. Counties that “haven’t got it” in his view include Los Angeles, Orange, San Francisco and Santa Clara.

“I’m happy to redirect every damn penny in these programs to the counties that get things done, period, period,” Newsom said during a press conference. “Unless they stop doing what they’ve been doing. Don’t make any more excuses.”

CARE Court rolled out in eight counties in late 2023 and was adopted statewide by December 2024. The idea was to help some of the most vulnerable Californians—people who are in the grip of psychosis, lying on sidewalks and unable to care for themselves because all other treatment programs have failed them.

But a CalMatters investigation found CARE Court has served much less More Californians than originally expected, and many families who relied on the program to help loved ones with severe mental illness were disappointed. The program also faces challenges in moving people off the streets and in housing, CalMatters found.

In January, the state received 3,817 petitions for care on behalf of someone with a mental illness. Petitions can come from a person’s family. first responder or behavioral health provider. Judges have approved only 893 treatment agreements, Kim Johnson, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said at the news conference.

Judges have ordered 32 people to be enrolled in CARE plans, which can happen if a participant does not agree to or follow a voluntary treatment agreement.

The Newsom administration initially estimated that between 7,000 and 12,000 Californians would be eligible for CARE Court.

More than 4,000 people have been turned away from the CARE program and received services in other ways, Johnson said.

The governor also highlighted counties he said are doing a good job using CARE Court to connect people with treatment, including Alameda, Humboldt and Santa Barbara. He spoke from inside the under-construction wing of Regis Village in Alameda, a mental health campus that has, among other services, 44 priority beds for people in the CARE Court.

“There are a number of counties that are getting it and getting things done, proving that it can be done when you have leadership that cares enough to get it done,” Newsom said.

The administration calculated the number of CARE Court petitions received per capita to determine success, naming the 10 counties with the highest numbers “CARE Champions” and relegating the 10 with the lowest to the “CARE ICU.”

The administration also updated theirs public accountability website to include this metric for each county.

But that data doesn’t take into account other important measures, such as the number of CARE settlements reached in each county, the number of petitions that are dismissed without anyone receiving treatment, or the number of people who complete CARE Court. San Diego County, for example, didn’t make the CARE Champion list, even though it had the most graduates of any county in the state as of last summer, with 10. Riverside, which was second with seven graduations, was on the governor’s CARE ICU list.

Newsom promised that counties on his “CARE ICU” list will receive additional assistance through the CARE Improvement and Coordination Division. He did not specify what that help would look like, but said the state is already working with some communities to provide technical support and training.

Nor did Newsom specify what funding might be at risk in communities that don’t step up their CARE Court game. But he did provide some insight when he said new money would go toward programs that can support CARE Court participants. That includes $131.8 million in Homekey+ awards funded by Proposition 1 to create 443 homes for people who need substance use and mental health services. The administration also committed another $159 million to homeless housing, assistance and prevention — part of the $1 billion allocated in the 2024-25 budget.

Highlighting counties it says have made good use of state funds so far, the administration invited Alameda County Judge Sandra Bean, who oversees the county’s CARE Court program, to share success stories.

The judge described a woman living with developmental disabilities, a substance use disorder and serious mental illness who now has her own apartment and takes medication.

“We had a number of people who did really, really well,” she said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.