Mental health court coming to Midland by 2020 – Midland Daily News

Coordinator position to be posted after county board approval

Mitchell Kukulka, Mitchell.Kukulka@mdn.net

The Midland County Courthouse, locatedat 301 W. Main St. (Mitchell Kukulka/Mitchell.Kukulka@mdn.net)

The Midland County Courthouse, locatedat 301 W. Main St. (Mitchell Kukulka/Mitchell.Kukulka@mdn.net)

The Midland County Courthouse, locatedat 301 W. Main St. (Mitchell Kukulka/Mitchell.Kukulka@mdn.net)

The Midland County Courthouse, locatedat 301 W. Main St. (Mitchell Kukulka/Mitchell.Kukulka@mdn.net)

Mental health court coming to Midland by 2020

By January 2020, Midland will join the growing list of Michigan communities that provide a court system designed to help individuals suffering from mental illness.

A mental health court is a specialized court that links offenders with mental health assessment and treatment programs in cases where they might otherwise face prison time. 42nd Circuit Court judge Stephen Carras, who will oversee the program, said the inspiration to introduce a mental health court came after several years of observing the type of people going through Midland's court systems, and witnessing the need for a specialized court of this type.

"The people that we're seeing on probation, and the kinds of issues that we're seeing on probations, they're not just the traditional criminal behavior driven by substance abuse or economic need there's a growing issue of people doing what they do in large part because of some serious mental disorder," Carras said.

The establishment of the new court was made possible by a grant for the State of Michigan to the amount of $40,290. A large portion of the funds will go toward hiring a part-time coordinator, with other costs including the hiring of a liaison with Community Mental Health for Central Michigan (CMH), establishing a drug-testing process and miscellaneous office supplies.

Carras said the process of establishing a mental health court in Midland began in September 2018, when he received an email from Ann Date, co-owner of the Partners in Change therapy center. Date was involved with a mental health work group that included representatives from CMH and Family & Children's Services of Mid-Michigan, and wanted to reach out to Carras due to his role in establishing the Midland County Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (MiHOPE) prison-diversion program in 2015.

Along with Community Corrections manager Marisa Boulton, Carras met with Date and her peers to discuss possible ways to introduce a mental health court.

"One of the traditional barriers (for a mental health court) has sometimes been the interaction between courts and treatment providers, where there's sometimes a breakdown in communication between the two, so we don't work effectively together," Carras said. "The idea that they're ready and willing to partner with the courts to communicate and provide treatment with this population, that to me tips the scales to make it worthwhile to pursue this."

Carras, Boulton and Date were joined by CMH program director Deana Mason and Dr. Karen Stanley-Kime from Partners in Change for a tour of other mental health court programs throughout the state, including Gennesse County, which contains one of the first courts of that type in Michigan.

Currently, Carras said the court is awaiting approval from the Midland County Board of Commissioners to post the position of the court coordinator. Though Carras said he would like to see the court open by the end of the year, "realistically" the program will be operational by Jan 1, 2020.

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Mental health court coming to Midland by 2020 - Midland Daily News