Chair Brooks-Powers questions treatment court assessment delays
Brooks-Powers asks about delays in treatment court assessments. Zayas says the court has staff ready but lacks enough clinicians for psychosocial evaluations, and increasing those providers would help.
We're still hearing that there are delays associated with cases being referred to treatment courts.
In particular, the delays are related to getting the necessary assessment completed to determine if people are suitable.
On a city level, what can be done to make treatment courts run more efficiently and effectively?
So there are clinicians that sometimes do these reports, especially in mental health court, which makes recommendations.
And sometimes there's just not enough clinicians to do that.
We, on our end, have been hiring resource coordinators, all of the necessary parties.
We're ready.
We have all of our staff in place ready to take on more cases.
But the folks who do, and it's not the court system, the folks who do the psychosocial and the recommendations for
eligibility for treatment are not provided by either district attorney's offices or other nonprofits.
And so increasing the number of those groups would be helpful as well.
George, I thank you.