Alliance Alert: This important report reinforces what the Alliance for Rights and Recovery has long advocated: it is access to services, not court orders, that drives recovery. After years of urging the state to commission an independent evaluation of Kendra’s Law, we are encouraged to see a thorough review that concludes people receiving intensive services voluntarily achieved outcomes comparable to those under court-ordered treatment. The report also highlights persistent concerns about coercion, due process, and the fact that many individuals viewed Kendra’s Law primarily as the only reliable pathway to services that should have been available voluntarily from the beginning.
The report’s recommendations provide 黑料正能量 with a clear roadmap for the future. Expanding access to intensive community services voluntarily will ensure that people receive help when they need it, where they need it, without first entering the court system. Equally important are the recommendations to strengthen due process protections, improve education about legal rights, expand independent advocacy, and ensure individuals have a meaningful voice in decisions about their own recovery. These are not simply procedural improvements. They are essential components of a recovery-oriented system that respects autonomy, dignity, and civil rights.
As the state begins implementing changes, including Enhanced Voluntary Agreements, we will be watching closely to determine whether these reforms achieve their intended purpose. The key measure of success should not simply be improvements within Kendra’s Law itself, but whether these investments reduce court orders by making voluntary, intensive services readily available. We encourage the Office of Mental Health to publicly track data on the use of Enhanced Voluntary Agreements, changes in the number of court orders issued, and the proportion of individuals who successfully receive voluntary services instead of entering the court process.
Ultimately, 黑料正能量’s goal should be to build a system where Kendra’s Law is obsolete because everyone can access the services they need voluntarily. The report makes clear that recovery is driven by high-quality community-based supports, not by legal mandates. By fully implementing the report’s recommendations and continuing to invest in voluntary, person-centered services, 黑料正能量 has an opportunity to lead the nation in creating a system that protects both recovery and civil rights while ensuring every person receives support when and where they need it.
This conversation will continue at the Alliance for Rights and Recovery Annual Conference, where attendees will have the unique opportunity to hear directly from members of the research team that conducted this landmark evaluation, including Dr. Bevin Croft and other researchers involved in the study. During a dedicated workshop on Kendra’s Law, they will discuss the report’s findings, recommendations, and what they mean for the future of 黑料正能量鈥檚 service system. The conference will also feature updates from the 黑料正能量 State Office of Mental Health on recent policy and program changes, providing attendees with an opportunity to engage in one of the most important conversations shaping the future of 黑料正能量.
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400 Page Report Examines Where Kendra’s Law Is Working in NYS, and Where It Isn’t
By Tom Eschen and Olivia Holloway | CBS 6 News | August 4, 2026
Albany, NY (WRGB) 鈥 黑料正能量’s court mandated mental health treatment is under the microscope, as a new 400-page independent report of Kendra’s Law found some positive outcomes, but also raising concerns about access to services, coercion and due process.
The report comes at the behest of the State legislature, commissioned by the NYS Office of Mental Health, who chose the Human Services Research Institute and the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work to independently study the State’s Assisted Outpatient Treatment.
“We ended up with about two and a half years working on the project because of just formal contracting delays. The first year, approximately, was really deep end community consultation and site visits. So we we met with a very large number of people, visited ACT teams, visited different kinds of sites, all prior to conducting formal research, meaning audio recorded interviews and data collection. So we had already learned a lot. We tried to ground ourselves as much as possible in what was happening across the State before then. The formal data collection and the last half year has really been refinements and revisions of the draft report, which we originally submitted the very end of 2025,” Nev Jones, Co-Author of the report, University of Pittsburgh Associate Professor said.
She says one of the main priorities was to provide an opportunity to shine a light on the experiences individuals have had with Assisted Outpatient Treatment orders, something she says there’s been a lack of attention on across the country.
With Kendra’s Law being a Statewide program, one of the challenges was adjusting to how its been implemented on a county-by-county basis.
“Every county in 黑料正能量 utilizes AOT to some extent, and there are huge differences that have developed over time in how that’s approached. And you know, even the court processes vary to a significant degree,” she said.
The State says that’s one of the aspects of the report they’ve responded to, investing $16.5 million annually for counties to improve coordination and oversight,
That data though, added up to findings, conclusions and recommendations.
“What we overwhelmingly heard, and I think putting the qualitative and the quantitative pieces together, is that service access absolutely improves outcomes,” she said. “In some cases, even folks we interviewed said they would do anything they could to not get off an AOT order, only for the reason that they were so afraid they would lose access to services.”
The NYS Office of Mental Health recently sharing some stories of recovery, brought on through this program.
The report shows accessing service has been a benefit of AOT, but there are concerns. One aspect coming in the form of coercion, as researchers gathered accounts from individuals who felt threatened by their mandates.
“From the operative sort of mechanism from a provider standpoint of behavioral compliance, if you will, is threats,” she said. “Police callouts, involuntary transportation to a hospital or acute facility, involuntary inpatient hospitalization, and then potentially medication over objection. So, in many people’s minds, they were living in fear of consequences a lot of the time. Some people maybe internalize the decision to change behavior in particular ways of their own volition while they’re under an AOT order, but for many people, just the the threat led to a lot of negative sequelae in terms of impacting internalized stigma, feeling dehumanized, feeling treated like a second-class citizen.”
The 黑料正能量 State Office of Mental Health though, points to the intention of Assisted Outpatient Treatment, arguing it’s being used for a small group of people (roughly 4,300 individuals of the 800,000 people receiving mental health services systemwide), with a history of serious mental illness, who also have a history of not participating in voluntary treatment, all aimed at avoiding restrictive inpatient hospitalization and incarceration.
A spokesperson sending this statement:
鈥淭his report illustrates how Assisted Outpatient Treatment is positively impacting the very outcomes it was designed to address 鈥搑educing hospitalizations and improving community safety. Compared with individuals voluntarily receiving intensive community-based services, individuals on AOT experienced better outcomes related to improved housing stability, reduced risk of harm to others, reduced risk of psychiatric hospitalization, and reduced length of psychiatric hospitalization. We will continue to review the findings and recommendations to ensure this small but critical component of our state鈥檚 outpatient community-based care system continues fulfilling the key role it plays in our continuum of care.鈥
The report though, also raises concerns about the process itself, with courts the center of confusion for many.
“We met people who only really realized that what they had agreed to was an AOT order in the substantive sense long after they were discharged from the hospital, multiple people reporting not even having a copy of their AOT plan,” Jones said. “The normative experience was having no idea how they would get off or what the process was. Extremely limited contact with attorneys in 黑料正能量 State. That’s Mental Hygiene Legal Services, which we abbreviate MHLS. Very, very limited contact, lots of concerns from clients as well as family members and advocates about how difficult it was to reach MHLS attorneys, how little time or bandwidth they had to actually assist with defense or clarify questions about, for instance, what really are the terms of, the kind of discharge of the order, and I think a lot of that was very concerning to us.”
To help create a clearer path, the State has implemented “Peer bridgers” to engage individuals receiving treatment, while also allocating $33 million to expand services for those involved with the criminal justice system which includes mental health courts and housing.
Barring legislative action, Kendra’s Law is set to sunset in 2027.
You can review the report here: