(a) Subject to appropriation, the department, in consultation with disability rights groups, county behavioral health and aging agencies, individuals with lived expertise, families, racial justice experts, and other appropriate stakeholders, shall provide optional training and technical resources for volunteer supporters on the CARE process, community services and supports, supported decisionmaking, people with behavioral health conditions, trauma-informed care, family psychoeducation, and psychiatric advance directives. The department may consult with other state and national public and nonprofit agencies and organizations and the Judicial Council to align supported decisionmaking training with best practices for persons with mental illnesses, intellectual and developmental disabilities, other disabilities, and older adults. The department may enter into a technical assistance and training agreement for this purpose, pursuant to Section 5984.
(b) The supporter shall do all of the following:
(1) Offer the respondent a flexible and culturally responsive way to maintain autonomy and decisionmaking authority over their own life by developing and maintaining voluntary supports to assist them in understanding, making, communicating, and implementing their own informed choices.
(2) Strengthen the respondent’s capacity to engage in and exercise autonomous decisionmaking and prevent or remove the need to use more restrictive protective mechanisms, such as conservatorship.
(3) Assist the respondent with understanding, making, and communicating decisions and expressing preferences throughout the CARE process.
(Added by Stats. 2022, Ch. 319, Sec. 7. (SB 1338) Effective January 1, 2023. Section conditionally operative as provided in Section 5970.5.)