One Mom's Quest: The Court That Shows Up, No Matter What

Most systems give up. Orange County’s CARE Court doesn’t.

When Janina Estrada’s son Jimmy Barela spiraled into schizophrenia, homelessness, and addiction over nearly two decades, every intervention felt like starting from scratch. She’d call 911, explain his situation to a different responder each time, watch him get ticketed for running into traffic during a psychotic break—and then watch him disappear again. The system wasn’t built to remember him. It was built to process him.

Then California launched the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court in 2023, and Estrada discovered something radical: two behavioral clinicians, Juan Banda and Chauncey Bowie, who showed up consistently. Who didn’t give up when Barela didn’t speak to them for a month after an emergency hospitalization. Who offered him food before court orders, trust before treatment.“If it wasn’t for Juan and Chauncey,”Estrada says,“my son wouldn’t be here anymore.”

The philosophy behind Orange County’s version of CARE is deceptively simple but runs counter to decades of mental health policy. Director Veronica Kelley is blunt about it:“Coercion does not work if we want to change things long-term.”The work starts with a question—”What do you need?”—not a summons. Research shows it takes about 20 visits to build trust with someone who’s housed, nearly 40 if they’re on the streets. But once that relationship exists, roughly 90 percent enter voluntary treatment. That’s not opinion. That’s outcome.

Banda’s work illustrates what relentless actually means. He spends his days driving between San Clemente and La Habra, checking psychiatric wards and the almost invisible spaces where crisis lives: makeshift shelters behind dumpsters, tents under bridges, jail cells. Every CARE client gets offered housing alongside treatment. No housing, no deal. Barela took months to stabilize on antipsychotic medication and sign a care agreement. He relapsed. He missed curfews. But Banda and Bowie kept showing up.

In January 2026, Barela became Orange County’s second CARE Court graduate. He now lives in a halfway house, sees a nurse and doctor regularly, goes to the beach. He held his seven-month-old granddaughter. His mother finally has a reason to believe the system isn’t abandoning her son.

The numbers, though, reveal the cost of this approach. Orange County has received 231 petitions in less than three years. Only 27 have entered care agreements; six have completed the program. Statewide, more than 3,800 petitions have led to just 32 court-ordered treatment plans—far below projections of 7,000 to 12,000 participants annually. Kelley describes CARE as an“unfunded mandate,”pulling staff from existing programs to make it work. The county spends about $4 million yearly on a program that critics say moves too slowly for people in immediate danger.

But that’s the tension at the heart of this work: Speed looks like coercion. Patience looks like neglect. Orange County has chosen patience, betting that one person saved—really saved, not just processed—is worth more than a target number hit. For families like the Estradas, who measure success now in a smile and a granddaughter held, it’s an answer to a question California has struggled with for decades. How do you help someone who doesn’t believe they need help? By showing up. Again. And again. And again.