Category: Uncategorized

ABCs of Advocacy Onsite Workshop and Webinars Materials Marin County

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Hello Marin County Attendees or Registrants of “CAMHPRO’s Delivering theABC’s of Advocacy”,
It was a wonderful honor to come to, and enjoy your BEAUTIFUL county and meet all of you!
Please find the recordings for Web A, Web B and Web C below.
Here are also all resources provided on the webinars and in the onsite workshop. Just click on the title:
I hope to ‘see’ you all at other webinars and events soon!
Thank you,
Karin
Webinar A: Advocacy Basics
What is covered:
  • What is advocacy, who are stakeholders and why advocate.
  • Consumer roots of the law, the Mental Health Service Act (MHSA) and regulations for Stakeholder involvement in planning mental health services.
  • A bird’s eye view of who the County decision-makers are and how you can participate.
  • Access to basic terms and acronyms used in Behavioral Health and where you can go to find county contacts.
Webinar B: Best Community Planning Practices
What is covered:
  • Types of County meetings and various stakeholder participation or roles
  • Meeting mechanics, culture and etiquette
  • MHSA stakeholder community planning best principles & practices applied to different stakeholder roles.
  • What to look for in county budgets and plans.
  • More resources to become a meaningful stakeholder
Webinar C: Community Planning; How to Work It
·
What is covered:
  • More on applying the MHSA community planning best principles & practices
  • How you compose and give public comment.
  • How you get on decision-making boards/councils.
  • Next steps to being a meaningful stakeholder.
Funded by the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

This Thurs. 4/11 Peer Support 4 Peer Supporters

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Peer Support 4 Peer Supporters
CAMHPRO WEBINAR
This Thurs. 4/11
12 noon
Register Here

Co-facilitator:
  • Denise Walker, Senior Peer Support Specialist
  • Riverside University Health System See Bio
What’s the Focus?
  • Choose project Vision from January participant feedback
  • Review CA Stakeholder, SAMHSA, other Peer Values
  • Choose/Adopt Peer Values

SEE WWT Stakeholder-vetted Values & Ethics
SEE SAMHSA Core Competencies for Peer Workers in Behavioral Health Services
SEE Values and Ethics Copeland Center

About CAMHPRO’s Monthly Peer Webinars:
CAMHPRO has a quarterly rotation of a Spotlight with a Guest Presenter of Model Peer Support Practices, Peer Support 4 Peer Supporters (PS4PS) with a Guest Co-Facilitator, and Updates on CA Peer Specialist Standardization. THANKS TO THE CO-FACILITATOR VOLUNTEERS!
Schedule:
May, Aug, Nov, Feb:
Peer Model Spotlight—Next May 9
—Topic: Changing Organizational Culture
—Co-facilitator Kristen Mungcal, Program Manager, San Bernardino County
June, Sep, Dec, Mar:
State Peer Standardization–Next June 13
—Co-facilitator: Catherine Clay, VP of Client Advisory, Los Angeles Region
July, Oct, Jan, April:
Peer Support 4 Peer Supporters (PS4PS)–Next July 11
—Co-facilitator: Brian K. Hollander, Program Manager, Independent Living Resource Center, Inc., Santa Barbara
You only need to register once for this monthly webinar with your correct email. If you have already registered you will receive a reminder email each month with your unique link to join.
REGISTER HERE

SB 10 will be heard at the Appropriations Committee on Monday April 8, 2019

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SB 10 will be heard at the Appropriations Committee

Monday April 8, 2019.

ANTHONY PORTANTINO, Chair

10 a.m. – John L. Burton Hearing Room (4203) at Capitol

Dear Senator Portantino,
The Steinberg Institute is a leading nonprofit public policy institute that supports and encourages effective and comprehensive mental health policymaking. We are the proud sponsors of SB 10 (Beall) that would call upon the state to standardize high-quality peer and family support services. READ ENTIRE LETTER

Sammy Caiola / Capital Public Radio

Eric Bailey now works for Sacramento’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, using his lived experience with bipolar disorder to help connect people suffering from mental health issues to the care they need.

California lawmakers are considering a bill that could help build a workforce of people living with mental illness to help guide others in need of services toward care.

When Eric Bailey landed in a San Diego hospital after a mental health crisis in 2013, he says he was at the end of his rope.

“At the moment of being ready to discharge, I had zero idea what I was doing,” he said. “I had no vehicle there at the time, my wife was leaving me, I’d lost my job, I was losing my apartment as well.”

Bailey didn’t know where to go. Then a stranger approached him and told him he’d been in that same psychiatric ward, and that he could help. READ FULL ARTICLE

SB 10 Peer Certification Capitol Visit 3/27

CAMHPRO2 Comments

Following emotional testimony from supporters
The Senate Health Committee Wednesday
Unanimously passed SB 10 (Senator Jim Beall)

which would establish a certification process for peer providers of mental health and substance abuse services. Peers are people who draw on experiences with mental illness and/or substance use disorder and recovery, bolstered by specialized training, to deliver valuable support services in a treatment setting.

Witnesses Wednesday included Khatera Tamplen, a peer herself who is consumer empowerment manager at Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services and chair of the state Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, which co-sponsored the bill along with the Steinberg Institute. Also speaking was Keris Jän Myrick, Discipline Chief for Peer Services for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, who was featured in a New York Times article for being a successful executive with a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Myrick was accompanied by LA County Director of Mental Health Jon Sherin, who said getting a certification process was his top priority.

Across California, peer providers are already used in many settings. However, there is no statewide standard of practice, consistent curriculum, training standards, supervision standards, or certification protocol in California, which now one of only two states (the other is South Dakota) that does not have peer certification. Yet peer support programs have emerged nationwide as an evidence-based practice with proven benefits to both peers and the clients they assist, including reduced hospitalizations, alleviation of depression and enhanced self-advocacy.

A peer support program also creates a career ladder so that consumers and family members working in mental health care have the opportunity to fully contribute, translating their experience into meaningful employment.

Hot Off the Press: SB 10 Peer Certification First Hearing 3/27

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The first Hearing date for SB 10, Peer, Parent, Transition-Age, and Family Support Specialist Certification Program, has been set. 
Wednesday March 27
1:30 p.m.
Senate Health Committee Room 4203
Support letters are due a week before the hearing, so by 3/20

[NYAPRS Enews] Study: Self-Directed Care Shown to Improve Outcomes and Controlling Costs in Comparison to Traditional Services

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Mental Health Self-Directed Care Financing: Efficacy in Improving Outcomes and Controlling Costs for Adults With Serious Mental Illness by Judith A. Cook, Ph.D., Samuel Shore, L.M.S.W., Jane K. Burke-Miller, Ph.D., Jessica A. Jonikas, M.A., Marie Hamilton, L.C.S.W., M.P.H., Brandy Ruckdeschel, M.Ed., L.P.C., Walter Norris, M.A., Anna Frost Markowitz, M.P.H., Matthew Ferrara, B.A., Dulal Bhaumik, Ph.D.

Over the past two decades, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has promoted use of a consumer-directed, “money follows the person,” health care financing approach for use by individuals with a broad range of disabilities. Called self-directed care, this model gives individuals direct control over public funds to purchase health care services, supports, and material goods necessary for them to reside in the community rather than in inpatient or nursing facilities.

Although use of this model to promote the recovery of people with serious mental illness is less common, multiple states are now developing mental health self-directed care initiatives, and interest in this approach is growing. Recently, consumer, advocacy, and service provider communities have called for greater use of self-directed care in mental health, as have federal agencies, including CMS (1), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Disability, Aging and Long-TermCare Policy (3). The purpose of this study was to conduct a randomized controlled trial of a mental health self-directed care program, assessing its effects on participant outcomes, service satisfaction, and service costs.

 Objective

Self-directed care allows individuals with disabilities and elderly persons to control public funds to purchase goods and services that help them remain outside institutional settings. This study examined effects on outcomes, service costs, and user satisfaction among adults with serious mental illness.

Methods

Public mental health system clients were randomly assigned to self-directed care (N=114) versus services as usual (N=102) and assessed at baseline and 12 and 24 months. The primary outcome was self-perceived recovery. Secondary outcomes included psychosocial status, psychiatric symptom severity, and behavioral rehabilitation indicators.

Results

  • Compared with the control group, self-directed care participants had significantly greater improvement over time in recovery, self-esteem, coping mastery, autonomy support, somatic symptoms, employment, and education. No between group differences were found in total per-person service costs in years 1 and 2 or both years combined.
  • However, self-directed care participants were more likely than control group participants to have zero costs for six of 12 individual services and to have lower costs for four.
  • The most frequent nontraditional purchases were for transportation (21%), communication (17%), medical care (15%), residential (14%), and health and wellness needs (11%).
  • Client satisfaction with mental health services was significantly higher among intervention participants, compared with control participants, at both follow-ups.

Conclusions

The budget-neutral self-directed care model achieved superior client outcomes and greater satisfaction with mental health care, compared with services as usual.

Psychiatric Services in Advance (doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201800337)

Save the Date Alternatives 2019 July 7 – 11, 2019 Washington, D.C.

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The National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery (NCMHR)
#Alternatives2019
The Catholic University of America (CUA)
Washington, D.C.,
July 7 – 11, 2019

Last year we returned to our roots: We held Alternatives 2018 at a university for the first time in decades, without relying on federal funding, the way our movement for social justice first began. The freedom of truly being “On Our Own Again” was felt as a palpable energy. The opportunity to do advocacy training and host a “Hill Day” was exciting and rewarding. We are eager to repeat this Pre-conference Action at Alternatives 2019.

The Alternatives conference is the oldest and largest conference of its kind, organized and hosted for more than three decades by peers for peers (people with lived experience of the behavioral health system, emotional distress/crisis, trauma, substance use, and/or addiction). The Alternatives conference is renowned for offering the latest and best information in the peer recovery movement, and provides an invaluable opportunity for peers to network with and learn from one another. This conference is funded entirely through registration fees and donations.

Alternatives 2019 will include a two-day pre-conference, July 8 and 9, with advocacy training on Monday and a “Hill Day” on Tuesday, when peer advocates will meet, by appointment, with the staff of their U.S. senators and congressional representatives. Now more than ever, it is important for us to participate in the national debate.

The conference will officially open with dinner and keynote presentations on Tuesday evening, July 9, followed by workshops and caucuses on Wednesday and Thursday. A call for workshop proposals will be announced soon.

Newer college dorm rooms with single beds and private or shared bathrooms will be available for an affordable price, and three buffet-style meals a day will be provided in the dining hall. All meeting rooms are ADA-accessible; some accessible dorm rooms can be reserved. There is a newly renovated Metro stop on campus; parking is also available. There are many hotels a few Metro stops away for those who wish to stay off campus.

NCMHR appreciates CUA’s mission statement for Alternatives 2019: Catholic University encourages “serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs, and promotes intellectual, ethical and spiritual understanding. We embody this principle in the diversity of our students, faculty and staff, our commitment to justice and the common good, our intellectual openness, and our international character.”The Alternatives conference strives to be a welcoming environment for all people, and we have been assured that all of our attendees will be treated with respect.

Alternatives 2019 is a great opportunity to learn new skills and share your passion for recovery, advocacy, the arts, multicultural and diversity awareness, youth involvement, and more! Come, find and raise your voice, share your expertise, meet old friends and make new ones!

We hope you will save the date
Share it with others
Join us at Alternatives 2019!

If you attended Alternatives 2018, we would like your input in this survey

More information Alternatives 2019

Sponsors are needed

Follow @AltCon_2019 on Twitter

Follow Alternativescon on Instagram.

For the Alternatives Facebook

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Questions? Write info@ncmhr.org
 www.alternatives-conference.org

National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery
Email: info@ncmhr.org
www.ncmhr.org