All court diversion programs share a common assumption: people with serious mental illness are better served by the mental health system than by the criminal justice system. One program, the Court Outreach Program (COP) offered by the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ottawa Branch, provides community-based services and support to people with mental illness who are involved in the legal system.
Recently, researchers in Ottawa set out to answer several important questions about the COP: Is it being delivered to the intended population? Is it being implemented as planned? What are the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the program? Their findings can offer insight into how to evaluate and improve Court Outreach Programs.
EENet has developed a Research Snapshot of the article, “An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Court Outreach Program for People with Severe and Persistent Mental Illness Who Are Legally Involved,” by John Sylvestre and others. It was originally published in the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, vol. 25, no. 9 (2010): 139-56. The Snapshot is available at www.ehealthontario.ca.
Research Snapshots are brief, clear language summaries of research articles, presented in a user-friendly format. To read EENet’s clear language summary of this article and others, visit the EENet website atwww.ehealthontario.ca.