Family members, behavioral health providers and first responders with a history of engagement with individuals struggling with untreated mental illness, may begin using a new program for government assistance called CARE Court.

San Francisco is one of the first of seven California counties to implement the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Act on Monday. The new state law includes a civil court process designed to provide community-based behavioral health services to residents who are living with untreated schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. 

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.