TITLE
Recommendation to request City Council support of the CARE Court framework that will create a new State policy for Mental health services - and request City Manager to examine the feasibility of the local program being administered by the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services (LBDHHS).
DISCUSSION
CARE (Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment) Court, introduced by Governor Newsom on March 3, 2022, is a new policy framework to provide individuals with mental health and substance use disorders care and services. The proposal, which must be approved by the Legislature, would require counties to provide comprehensive treatment to the most severely impaired and untreated Californians and hold patients accountable to their treatment plan.
CARE Court does not wait until someone is hospitalized or arrested before providing treatment. CARE Court will provide an opportunity for a range of people, including family members, first responders, intervention teams, and mental health service providers, among others, to refer individuals suffering from a list of specific ailments, many of them unhoused, and get them into community-based services.
CARE Court offers court-ordered individualized interventions and services, stabilization medication, advanced mental health directives, and housing assistance - all while remaining community-based. Plans can be up to 12-24 months. In addition to their full clinical team, the client-centered approach also includes a public defender and a supporter to help individuals make self-directed care decisions.
The CARE Court framework was created using the evidence that many people can stabilize, begin healing, and exit homelessness in less restrictive, community-based care settings. The plan focuses on people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, who may also have substance use challenges, and who lack medical decision-making capacity, and advances an upstream diversion from more restrictive cons...
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