Illinois Supreme Court hosts Virtual Summit Series to discuss mental health and problem solving in Illinois.

The Illinois Supreme Court will host a Virtual Summit Series late September and throughout October consisting of five online sessions discussing how Illinois courts and communities can better respond to mental illness. Sessions will address mental illness within contexts such as law enforcement, judicial leadership, quality of life, community-based collaboration, and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Court initially planned the summit as live in-person events, but shifted to a virtual format due to the pandemic. Planning began last October when an Illinois delegation, led by Chief Justice Anne Burke and Marcia Meis, director of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, attended a national summit in South Dakota as part of a State Justice Institute-funded initiative on the justice system, mental illness, and co-occurring disorders. The State Justice Institute (SJI), a nonprofit organization established by federal law in 1984 and overseen by a board appointed by the president and U.S. Senate, help fund Illinois’ Virtual Summit Series via the National Center for State Courts, which is providing technical support to the summit.

“Illinois’ problem-solving courts have helped thousands of individuals receive the help they need to get their lives back on track,” said Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne M. Burke in a press release. “Hosting this summit and convening key stakeholders to make changes to keep individuals with mental illness out of the justice system or prevent them from penetrating further, will keep the Illinois Courts at the forefront of mental health best practices.”

Illinois’ summit, intended for Illinois audiences, is also expected to attract viewers from other states planning similar summits, says Second District Appellate Justice Kathryn Zenoff, a member of the Illinois Supreme Court Mental Health Task Force who also was part of the Court’s South Dakota delegation last October.

Zenoff says the summit is a natural outgrowth of existing problem-solving court (PSC) programs that have been implemented throughout the Illinois court system and presents a unique opportunity for collaboration among representatives of all three branches of government to develop new initiatives and implement lasting change.

“Illinois is one of the first and few states to include Access to Justice requirements in its Problem-Solving Courts Standards,” Justice Zenoff says. “Illinois’ problem-solving courts have long been regarded nationally as the ‘gold standard.’ All of the more-than 107 drug, mental health, veterans, and DUI courts have been required to operate according to statewide standards adopted by our Supreme Court in 2015 to ensure uniformity among PSCs, but flexibility as well for these courts to tailor their programs in consideration of local needs and resources.” The standards were updated in 2019 for the Supreme Court by its Special Advisory Committee for Justice and Mental Health Planning, which Justice Zenoff chairs.

Scheduled speakers for the September-October summit include former U.S. Rep Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island), Judge Steven Leifman of Miami-Dade, Florida, and psychiatrists from Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.

Pete Sherman is managing editor of the Illinois Bar Journal.
psherman@isba.org