Families seek help for loved ones with mental illness

Klinkamon is holding out hope that a new state law known as Care Court will provide the answer she’s long sought to get her daughter into long-term treatment, one that wouldn’t require her to sustain some serious injury.

San Francisco and seven other counties are scheduled to launch Care Court later this year, with all other California counties following in 2024.

In the meantime, as counties work to set up the new system, people with severe mental illness are still trying to navigate the current one, which varies from county to county and is rife with barriers.

Care Court, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last year, requires counties to establish the new system for family members, neighbors and others to refer people with severe mental illness to judges, who could order that they participate in treatment that counties must fund.

The law passed nearly unanimously out of the state Legislature, where there’s universal agreement that the state needs to take drastic steps to address the mental health crisis on California streets. But Care Court faces steep opposition from civil liberties groups that argue it will infringe on the rights of mentally ill people and force them into treatment. 

Several groups are appealing to the state’s highest court to block Care Court from going into effect. Disability Rights California, the Western Center on Law and Poverty, and the Public Interest Law Project argue in their lawsuit that people with severe mental illness should not be forced into treatment. Existing, voluntary mental health programs should receive more funding instead, they argue. 

In their suit, the organizations argue that Care Court “violates essential constitutional guarantees of due process while needlessly burdening fundamental rights to privacy, autonomy and liberty.” The aim, the lawsuit alleges, “is to create a politically expedient legal mechanism for removing a disfavored group of Californians from public view.”

The groups also argue that Care Court will disproportionately harm people of color, who historically have not been treated fairly by the courts system.

The law “unnecessarily involves our court systems to force medical care and social services on people,” Helen Tran, a senior attorney at the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said in a statement. “We are opposed to this new system of coercion.”

The Newsom administration is fighting the lawsuit in court, arguing Care Court should stand. 

In the meantime, counties are working to implement the new system. Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, the Newsom administration official who has led much of the work on Care Court, said that many counties already have systems in place that provide care to severely mentally ill people. They can build on those to create a Care Court system to allow families and other community members to petition for people to receive court-mandated treatment plans, he said.

“It feels like there is momentum,” Ghaly told The Chronicle. “Every county is going to have a slightly different story because of where they’re starting and where they have to go, but I continue to be hopeful and confident that as we come toward October that these counties are going to be able to put together programs and processes that allow this pathway to be useful.”

The success of the new law will hinge in part on counties’ ability to secure housing for people who go through the program. That concern was echoed by members of the panel tasked with overseeing Care Court’s implementation, which had its first meeting Tuesday.

If it’s successful, people like Klinkamon see Care Court as a potential lifeline to getting treatment for their severely mentally ill children and relatives.

Klinkamon gathered with a group of people who have mentally ill family members outside the Capitol building on Tuesday, ahead of the first meeting of a working group tasked with guiding the implementation of Care Court.

She shared her notes about her daughter’s medical and legal history with The Chronicle, which detail arrests and hospital stays over the past three years. They describe a woman cycling through hospitals and jails in California and Nevada.

“She just keeps going missing,” Klinkamon said.

Medical documents viewed by The Chronicle show that Klinkamon’s daughter has been diagnosed with severe mental illness and has been hospitalized several times. In December she was placed in a guardianship in Yolo County that will end next month, according to an order filed in Yolo Superior Court. 

Klinkamon worries that once the conservatorship expires, she’ll lose her daughter again.

Another mother who attended the gathering at the Capitol, Elizabeth Kaino Hopper, had recently been reunited with her own daughter, who was released from jail into a mental health diversion program.

“Our family is reunited today,” Hopper said, beaming as she marched with other supporters of Care Court.

Her daughter, Christine Hopper, is now in a program that provides her with housing, psychiatric care and other services.

Standing in the park surrounding the Capitol, Christine Hopper expressed frustration that Care Court passed after she was arrested and charged with assault for an incident she cannot recall — an event that took place after she became homeless when she stopped treatment for mental illness.

She said she thinks Care Court could have helped her earlier to get into a program like the one she’s currently in, without having to go to jail first. She said it’s frustrating that Care Court is on track to be implemented mere months after she could have benefited from it.

In the meantime, she said, the mental health diversion program she’s in is “pretty good,” and she’s happy to be out of jail. Now she sees her parents several times a week, she said.

“Being out is really nice,” she said. “I can see the stars at night. … I’m really happy to be out and lucky to have my mom.”

She lives in a building with other people in the same diversion program in Sacramento, she said. Her room feels a little impersonal, like a hotel. But she said she’s looking forward to making it feel more like a home by buying her own things like a bath mat and bed sheets.

Jennifer Williams, another woman gathered at the Capitol, wishes her daughter could have gotten treatment for her schizoaffective disorder. On Tuesday, she wore a shirt with a photo of her that read: “Maddie, my daughter, my <3 … 1984-2022.”

“This was the last time I saw her,” Williams said, pointing to the photo of her daughter wearing a blue hoodie. She had met her at a McDonald’s, Williams said, where her daughter told her: “The voices won’t leave me alone.”

The voices ultimately drove her away from a shelter where she was staying in Modesto. She fell asleep outside, where she was run over and killed, Williams said.

“She was the kind of person Care Court was for,” she said. “I truly believe she would have gotten help.”

Reach Sophia Bollag: [email protected]; Twitter: @SophiaBollag