After a slow start, a program that aims to bring thousands of Angelenos living with serious mental illness under court-led care has seen a spike in petitions filed in recent months, Los Angeles County officials said.<\/p>\n
CARE Court allows family members, first responders and others to ask a court \u2014 by way of a petition \u2014 to step in with a voluntary care agreement for someone living with serious, untreated mental illness, such as schizophrenia, to receive community-based mental health services.<\/p>\n
If the agreement fails, a judge could order the individual to sign on to a treatment plan.<\/p>\n
Since launching in L.A. County in December 2023, the program saw thousands fewer petitions each year than were initially projected.<\/p>\n
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But county officials said petitions filed in L.A. County jumped by about 85% between November 2025 and March 2026, with March seeing a total of 68 petitions.<\/p>\n
Martin Jones, a program manager with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, attributed the increase to working with hospitals, first responders and other groups to identify and refer people who might need help.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing quite a bit of work to put tools in their hands to also help them identify and refer folks to us who might benefit from the support,\u201d Jones told LAist. \u201cI think we\u2019re approaching the project from several fronts and we\u2019re seeing the results of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones added that a broadening of the diagnostic criteria in January to include people living with bipolar I disorder with psychotic features has also led to more petitions.<\/p>\n
A \u2018broken system\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Proponents of CARE Court say it provides a less restrictive and structured way to stabilize people living with a mental illness, and they say the recent increase in petitions shows that the program is gaining traction.<\/p>\n
Some mental health and civil liberties advocates don\u2019t see it as a positive development.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of petitions says nothing about outcomes, which is the real point of the program,\u201d said Eve Garrow, policy analyst at the ACLU of Southern California. \u201cPositive outcomes are really miniscule compared to the population in need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Analysis of the program statewide has shown that about half of the petitions end up getting dismissed, but L.A. County officials say more than 4,000 Californians statewide have been set up with alternative county services when a CARE agreement or plan is not appropriate.<\/p>\n
Some critics, including Garrow, have called the program a waste of taxpayer money.<\/p>\n
An analysis by the state Assembly Committee on the Judiciary on CARE Court looked at the 100 participants in the program statewide in fiscal year 2024 and found the cost per person was about $713,000.<\/p>\n
Garrow said CARE Court ultimately doesn\u2019t address the underlying problem: a mental and behavioral health system that is underfunded.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically what it does is it slaps a court order onto a broken system instead of fixing the system,\u201d Garrow said.<\/p>\n
A look at LA County numbers<\/p>\n
Petitions filed between program launch and June 30, 2026:<\/p>\n
Family Initiated Petitions: 571
Provider Network Initiated Petitions: 42
Self: 10
Other Referral Sources: 1
Department of State Hospitals (DSH): 228
CA Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation: 45
LA County Dept. of Mental Health Initiated: 214<\/p>\n
Total: 1,111<\/p>\n
Between Dec. 1, 2023, and June 30, 2026, there were 1,111 petitions filed in L.A. County, far below the roughly 3,800 state officials projected the county could expect annually.<\/p>\n
An L.A. County Department of Mental Health spokesperson said that through June 2026, 21 people had graduated from a 12-month CARE court program, with four additional participants scheduled to graduate within the next year.<\/p>\n
The department added that, in L.A. County, “63% of CARE Court participants have opted to continue receiving services and support through CARE instead of graduating.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a slow start, a program that aims to bring thousands of Angelenos living with serious mental illness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[38789,48,6105,52,51,47,50,49,51679,55868],"class_list":["post-420417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-care-court","tag-la","tag-la-county","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-schizophrenia","tag-serious-mental-illness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}