With a Fall 2023 deadline looming, the first 8 California Counties to implement CARE Court have been coordinating meetings between legal aid organizations, public defender offices, courts, and political and administrative staff to determine the structure of this new program. In so doing, a particular kind of chicken-and-egg problem has emerged which has hampered counties and partners from moving forward implementing CARE Court.
Essentially, before counties commit to any kind of structure, they want to know how representation of CARE Court respondents will be allocated between legal aid attorneys and public defenders. The language of the statute gives legal aid priority in representation, should they decide to do so – if legal aid declines, the respondent is assigned a public defender. As such, preliminary meetings about the structure of CARE Court have begun with the question of which legal aid organizations, if any, are willing to represent CARE Court respondents in any given county. However, legal aid/public defense has been understandably hesitant to commit to representation without knowing at what level the state plans to compensate them. The state, in turn, has given preliminary numbers which legal aid, the state bar, and others have insisted is too low for the number of hours these cases will take (at least 12 months of in-person hearings, plus attorney-client meetings and coordination with social services).
In essence, the counties are waiting on legal aid and public defense, who are waiting on the state. Until this logjam is cleared, it will be difficult to move forward on the substantive parts of CARE Court, like the provision of services/creation of wraparound care.
One model that some counties are exploring is a hybrid/joint representation system where the public defender, who is more familiar with the judges and courtrooms, provides in-court representation, while legal aid focuses on arranging wraparound care and dealing with ancillary legal needs, such as benefits, immigration, and housing. While the governor’s office deliberately eschewed requiring joint representation when drafting SB 1338, the language of the statute does not explicitly forbid it. Indeed, joint representation, in essence, allows the entire continuity of indigent defense to work in harmony. While solo representation has virtues, in my experience lifting someone out of homelessness, particularly the chronically homeless, severely mentally ill population CARE Court targets, requires an entire team of professionals working together. Allowing public defense, whose caseloads are already crowded, to focus on preparing status reports, prepping clients for hearings, and other in-court advocacy while letting legal aid focus on wraparound holistic care seems like a natural way for each branch of the team to play to its strengths.
CCWRO Homelessness News and Notes 