This week, four of the five county supervisors were so wowed by preliminary results of a program known as Laura’s Law, or AOT — Assisted Outpatient Treatment — that they approved continued funding though next June. Since California voters passed Laura���s Law in 2002, county mental-health activists have been pushing to implement it here in Santa Barbara County.
The program — which at its most extreme authorizes judges to order seriously mentally ill people into outpatient treatment, even if they refuse — has been given a chance to yield meaningful results.
After just four months, the judges have not been called to action. Instead, Laura’s Law has supported the efforts of mental-health outreach workers to successfully enroll seven of the most resistant mentally ill individuals into treatment programs, and to repeatedly contact another nine. It is this relentless interaction that distinguishes the program from other outreach efforts.