Listen: Mental health podcast on Gov. Newsom’s CARE Court

By Julie Wernau and Dan Gorenstein, CalMatters

A CARE Court recipient in San Francisco on Dec. 1, 2025. Photo by Florence Middleton for CalMatters/Catchlight

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

How do you help someone who doesn’t want help? 

Families of people with serious mental illness, behavioral health experts and policymakers have been asking this question for years. People dealing with psychosis often struggle to address basic needs like food, shelter and hygiene. But their paranoia or delusions lead them to reject their loved ones and public support. About half of people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders do not believe they are sick.   

California Gov. Gavin Newsom set out to solve this chronic challenge when he introduced CARE Court in 2022 — an ambitious plan to roll out courts that could more easily get people with serious mental illness off the streets and compel them into treatment.

“This is critical help for exhausted and financially stressed families that have been trying to help relatives stuck in dark, unimaginable pain on their own,” he said in his 2024 State of the State address.

Many families — desperate after watching their loved ones cycle through incarceration and homelessness for years — cheered the new initiative. But advocates and some behavioral health experts said forcing someone into treatment was a step too far. 

A little over two years into the program, CalMatters has put together the most comprehensive look yet into CARE Court statewide. This series, a partnership with the visual storytelling organization Catchlight, includes firsthand accounts from family members, many of whom initially supported CARE Court but have since turned against it. It also features interviews with first responders, policymakers and mental health advocates. 

CalMatters’ Marisa Kendall, who helped lead this investigation, dug into the findings with Tradeoffs, a nonprofit news organization that covers health policy.

You can listen to the full conversation with Kendall below on the Tradeoffs podcast, or read the transcript on the Tradeoffs website. The podcast episode also includes an interview with June Dudas, who turned to CARE Court after spending 40 years trying to help her schizophrenic cousin. Dudas’ hopes and heartbreak exemplify the struggles many families are grappling with as they attempt to help some of the country’s most vulnerable and hard-to-reach people.

Listen here. 

Here are a few highlights from Kendall’s conversation with Tradeoffs:

Not as many people are using CARE Court as anticipated. Newsom’s administration estimated that as many as 12,000 Californians would qualify for CARE Court. As of October 2025, just 3,092 petitions have been filed, according to the latest state data reviewed by CalMatters, and only 684 have resulted in voluntary treatment agreements. 

Despite the rhetoric about forced treatment, most of CARE Court’s work has been voluntary. While Newsom said the program would allow judges to order people to follow treatment plans, CalMatters found that’s largely not happening. Just 22 treatment plans had been ordered through October across the state.

CARE Court was created through state legislation, but it’s being implemented by California’s 58 counties. Most of the counties aren’t on board with involuntary treatment. Instead, places like San Diego County are using the program to slowly build trust and encourage people to voluntarily accept treatment.

Changes to the law are fueling the low uptake. Between the time Newsom introduced the idea in March 2022 and when it became law six months later, legislators significantly altered the program. They limited eligibility to only people with schizophrenia and raised the bar to compel treatment. Lawmakers also added additional documentation requirements to the application process. As a result, nearly half of all cases have been dismissed.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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