GA’s juvenile justice chief stepping down
Amy Howell, the first woman to head the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, is stepping down after just 10 months on the job. Gov. Nathan Deal has named her general counsel for the Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities to help oversee a federal mental health settlement.
Ga. settles suit, pledges to fix community-based mental health care
Georgia today agreed to expand community care to keep thousands of people with mental illness out of its substandard, and sometimes deadly, psychiatric hospitals. The agreement settles a 3-year-old lawsuit brought by the Justice Department after my pals Andy Miller (left) and Alan Judd at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution rolled out a shocking series of stories about the state’s failures in mental health care.