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Principles of Forensic Treatment
The forensic treatment system exists at the intersection of behavioral health, public safety, and the justice system. Individuals served within the system, clinical teams, courts, attorneys, community providers, and state agencies each play a distinct role in supporting recovery, due process, and public safety. The following principles reflect the values and practices IDHS strives to uphold to ensure forensic treatment services are delivered in a manner that is clinically appropriate, just, equitable, and respectful of individual rights:
- Providing care, ensuring safety: Forensic treatment staff at state operated psychiatric hospitals and partner providers employ clinical expertise with compassion. Their policies are in place to care for and protect patients and staff, not penalize them.
- Complexity communicated clearly: The legal system decides who enters and leaves forensic care. Clinical staff are committed to providing clear, pragmatic information to stakeholders in the judicial and outpatient care systems to support just, clinically informed decisions.
- Court reports should honor the individual complexity of patients without obscuring answers to the specific questions posed by state statute: Is this person fit to stand trial? Does this person require inpatient care due to risk of harm to self or others?
- Focused on forensic insight: The clinical teams’ role in a patient’s recovery is to leverage a period of temporary forensic-focused care to support their successful navigation of the court system.
- Patients may have numerous challenges, but in order to honor their right to self-determination and freedom, clinical staff focus must remain on fitness restoration, reducing risk of harm to self or others, and successful discharge into less restrictive treatment environments in the community.
- Treatment fidelity & applied flexibly: Clinical staff follow best practices and standards for quality care and apply them thoughtfully to individual patients. Consistent application of assessments assures care teams that they are providing the focused, quality care patients deserve.