CARE Court in Humboldt County is working quite well, the Eureka City Council was told during a presentation Tuesday evening.
“Humboldt County has been particularly successful with its CARE Court implementation,” said Jacob Rosen, Eureka’s managing mental health clinician, during a report. “We have one of the highest referral volumes per capita amongst other counties. We’ve had 55 referrals total. We’ve had one person graduate already since December of 2024.”
CARE Court is a court process of providing mandatory, community-based mental health and substance use treatment for individuals with schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic disorders.
Rosen noted the state came up to meet with the county, and Eureka officials were included in those discussions.
“We’re all able to do some great advocacy with the state on what changes might be beneficial and how CARE Court is operating and implemented now, but also what might make it work better,” Rosen added.
Rosen noted minor changes made to the CARE Court program last year. He said there were some adjustments to the referral process, and there was an expansion of who could be eligible for the program.
But a key problem remains.
“The system is largely unchanged. Unfortunately, part of that unchanged portion is that it’s still largely an unfunded mandate on the behavioral health departments across the state,” Rosen said. “There is some opportunity to bill for some of those circumstances … However, it’s not something that really covers the costs due to the intensity of services needed with those clients.”
Later in the meeting, Councilmember G. Mario Fernandez asked what the lack of funding means for Eureka.
“I don’t want to speak for DHHS behavioral health,” Rosen said, “however, I would venture a guess that allotting more staff currently, they have one clinician and one case manager. That case manager started just recently, and before that, they just had the clinician, which, again, for the 55 folks who have been referred, having two staff members is not sufficient for the level of intensity that’s needed to treat the folks who are referred for CARE Court. And so I think that’s probably the larger barrier that lack of funding creates.”
Rosen also said the process needs to address ongoing issues.
“There’s still a lack of consequences for non-compliance folks who are referred to CARE Court, even if they meet criteria and are given hearing dates and serve those notices, essentially, if they don’t show up for a long enough period of time, those cases are dropped, and there are not necessarily any consequences or follow-up baked into that,” he said.
What does that mean in Humboldt County?
“If a client is non-participatory in CARE Court, there is a serious evaluation at the behavioral health level around whether that individual does need conservatorship, and many of those cases have been referred to the Public Guardian for conservatorship,” he explained.
But overall, Rosen stressed that agencies working together have been a local key to success.
“I would say a huge factor of success has just been the collaboration amongst the county behavioral health department, the court systems, both the DA and the public defender’s office, as well as county counsel and then other agencies,” Rosen concluded. “(The) City of Eureka, being one of those, we’ve really been able to come together and for the clients that have been referred, really kind of streamline the process as much as we can, and jump through the hoop so that those folks can get the services that they need.”
Ruth Schneider can be reached at 707-441-0520.