In late May, the room at St. Thomas More Catholic Church was filled as over 300 leaders from Justice United and the NC Latino Congress gathered. Their objective was to ensure the implementation of the commitments they had achieved the previous year, which included securing $500,000 in investments for Latino mental health services and advocating for criminal justice reform.
The executives of Alliance Health, the private company responsible for managing the mental health funds, announced their plans to invest $500,000 in the upcoming fiscal year. These investments would be directed towards various initiatives, such as training bilingual community health workers to provide intervention, increasing the reimbursement rate for bilingual providers by 50%, and supporting the revival of the only bilingual therapy practice in the area. This clinic had been forced to close its Orange County office a decade ago due to the previous administering company's illegal denial of services to undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, the CEO of that company was found to be compensated five times the legal limit and misusing public funds for personal luxuries.
Leaders also secured commitments from the new District Attorney. These commitments included making diversion options, particularly for mental health and substance use treatment, more readily available by signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the county's diversion programming. The District Attorney also agreed to initiate data tracking to address racial disparities and committed to expunging the records of 3,400 residents who were now eligible due to their conviction as juveniles. Furthermore, the new District Attorney vowed to honor the previous agreement made by their predecessor, which provided an alternate program for safe drivers without a license to avoid prosecution and fines.