The Mental Health Coordinator

The Court Mental Health program serves the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, and the brain injured. The Mental Health Coordinator (MHC) position is housed in the Second Judicial Circuit's Office of the Court Administrator and is modeled after the success of the Detention Review Coordinator. The MHC focuses primarily on improving case processes, information availability, and problem resolution for cases involving mentally ill defendants. The program continually identifies areas where improvements can be made to decrease or reduce delays in case processing, thereby decreasing costs of incarceration.

The Court's Mental Health Coordinator is instrumental in:

1. developing and implementing processes for early identification of defendants with mental health concerns in the criminal justice system.
2. establishing and expanding the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program through a collaboration with the Tallahassee Police Department and NAMI-Tallahassee.
3. developing and implementing protocols for mental health pretrial release, mental health probation, misdemeanor and felony mental health court, competency evaluation process, APD and DCF commitments, conditional releases,
4. establishing a mental health model order database
5. developing a system for tracking mentally ill defendants
6. providing case management assistance to the judiciary on all cases where mental health issues exist.
7. providing liaison services on behalf of the Court
8. assisting defendants and their families in understanding and navigating the criminal justice system

For further assistance the Court's Mental Health Coordinator can be reached at: (850) 606-4438 or Kendra Brown