Laura’s Law, adopted by a growing number of California counties, including Los Angeles County and Orange County, allows counties to provide programs of intensive, court-ordered treatment in the community for individuals with mental illness who are, because of symptoms of their illness, least able to otherwise obtain timely intervention.

Laura’s Law will:

• Permit people who are severely disabled by mental illness–and currently caught in a revolving door of homelessness, incarceration, and hospitalization–to receive timely, continuous, and supervised treatment in the community.
• Safeguard the public and the person, by allowing families and mental health professionals to petition for “assisted outpatient treatment” for individuals incapacitated by mental illness before they become a danger to themselves or others.
• Protect the rights of the individual by requiring court approval of the petition to provide “assisted outpatient treatment” to assure that it is applied only to those who are so severely disabled by mental illness that they are unable to stay in treatment without help and supervision.
• Authorize “assisted outpatient treatment” orders lasting up to 180 days and, when appropriate, the renewal of them.
  Provide those under orders with intensive, supervised mental health treatment in the community until they are capable of maintaining their own psychiatric care and recovery
• Reduce county expenditures on law enforcement interaction, judicial, jail, and crisis services.

For a Functional Outline of the law CLICK HERE.