Gov. Gavin Newsom declared on Thursday that CARE Court, his signature mental health program, “has now helped 10,000+ Californians get the lifesaving support and care they need and deserve,” meeting his administration’s goal of 7,000 to 12,000 people initially served. The state’s own data tell a smaller story, and the math behind the number has problems the administration itself concedes.

As of June, 1,470 people had treatment agreements or plans through the program, which Mr. Newsom introduced in March 2022, according to the state’s most recent figures. Another 4,887 people received services outside the program after first coming into contact with it. Both numbers sit far below the projections that accompanied the program’s launch, Mr. Newsom wrote in a post on X.

The count has grown. A CalMatters investigation in September 2025 found only 528 people enrolled in CARE agreements or plans, and a new state report shows participants moving into housing and getting treatment and medication at rising rates. CARE stands for Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment.

Rodger Butler, a spokesman for the state’s Health and Human Services Agency, said the administration reached 10,000 by adding the 5,484 petitions filed as of June to the 4,887 people who got services elsewhere. He acknowledged that the addition could count some people twice, and that it includes people whose petitions were dismissed without services and others still waiting for any service at all.

The agency stands by the framing anyway. “Taken together, the picture is clear: thousands of Californians living with serious mental illness have been connected to care because of CARE,” Mr. Butler said in an email. The governor’s office referred questions to the agency.

Families who once championed the program have turned on it. “The governor, I don’t know what county he’s seeing these results in,” said Gigi Crowder, chief executive of NAMI Contra Costa. The unsheltered people with severe illness whom families most want helped are not being served, she said. “Shoot, I thought it would be the answer.”

Disability rights advocates, longtime critics of the program as a step toward forced treatment, see families walking away: the share of petitions filed by someone with a personal relationship to the participant fell from 67 percent to 26 percent, state data show. The administration attributes the drop to a rise in petitions from mental health providers. “It’s not surprising because CARE Court is not delivering on what it told families it would,” said Monica Gilbert, associate director and senior counsel of public policy for Disability Rights California.

Ms. Gilbert and Keris Myrick, the organization’s board chair, sat on the state’s CARE Act working group and said neither was allowed to review the new report before publication. “Are we really involved, or are we window dressing?” Ms. Myrick said.

The report itself mixes progress with warnings. Median waits for courts to rule on petitions ran to three months in more populated counties, and nearly three-quarters of the hundreds of people dismissed from the program received no county mental health or addiction services. More than half of participants with active plans experienced what the report called an “event that may signal a need that was not addressed,” including jail, conservatorship, hospitalization or death.

Only about a quarter of participants were homeless when they entered the program, though Mr. Newsom sold CARE Court in part as an answer to street homelessness. Among those enrolled, the share living in temporary or permanent housing rose from 53 percent to 71 percent, and after five months, 87 percent were getting a mental health service and 61 percent were on medication.

“I’ve had clients say, ‘This is the longest I haven’t been arrested,’ and that gives me goosebumps,” Katia Benthale, a deputy public defender for Ventura County, said in a news release from the governor’s office.

Lawmakers, who call the program a work in progress, passed two laws this year to patch it: one lets firefighters and emergency medical workers refer people into CARE Court, and the other lets families share information with treatment teams. Two bills that would have linked CARE Court directly to the mental health conservatorship system died before reaching the governor.