[NYAPRS Enews] MIW: Georgia's Consumers List Their Priorities and Get Action

[Harvey Rosenthal]

Georgia's Consumers List Their Priorities
<http://www.miwatch.org/2010/09/georgias_consumers_list_pr.html> 

. . . and get action

By Phyllis Vine  MI Watch September 2010

 

In today's world of service cut-backs and uphill fights, consumer
activists in Georgia have been scoring victories. For a state that's
been under Department of Justice investigation for abuses in its seven
hospitals, this might seem surprising. But when you get the commissioner
of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities reporting to the
annual meeting of consumers in Georgia about his agency's progress in
meeting their priorities, that's noteworthy. 

Last year, Dr. Frank Shelp attended the annual conference of the Georgia
Mental Health Consumers Network <http://www.gmhcn.org/>  (GMHCN) on St.
Simon's Island. He was the first commissioner to do so, a fact that
executive director Sherry Jenkins Tucker noted with appreciation. 

As they do every year, before their meeting ends, consumers vote a list
of priorities. It's an agenda for taking action consistent with
promoting recovery. This year when Dr. Shelp returned, he enumerated
steps his office took to meet requests for improved housing, more jobs,
and accessible, dignified transportation.

Setting priorities is a priority
Consumers devised the practice of identifying priorities at their first
conference in 1991 at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. The state provided
transportation, bringing more than 600 people from each of the state's
83 day-treatment programs. Larry Fricks, Georgia's first director of
consumer affairs, organized that conference. State officials, he said,
were not expecting the turn-out to be so well organized or for
participants to be so articulate in their demands. "We took the moral
high ground by setting out those priorities, and the state had to
listen." They've been doing so ever since.

Dr. Shelp explained that last year's request for better housing led to
consultation with Pathways to Housing <http://www.pathwaystohousing.org>
originators of the Housing First model. This model is credited with
reducing homelessness, hospitalizations, and providing services while
reducing costs associated with spending time in an emergency room,
hospital or jail. He announced progress in providing civilian
transportation rather than relying on local law enforcement to take
someone to an emergency room. And he initiated the highly regarded
seminars, RESPECT,
<http://www.power2u.org/downloads/RSPCT-InstTrngMnl6-03-1.pdf>
developed by Joel Slack
<http://respectinternational.org/home/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_u
ser_op=view_page&PAGE_id=2&MMN_position=2:2>  to train the department's
8,100 employees. 

Respect is not just the acronym for a training seminar. "Respect is at
the core of countering stigma," he said. An already sympathetic audience
broke into applause at the otherwise sedate conference center, Epworth
by the Sea, when he added, "If everybody has respect, stigma goes away."

 

Consumer knowledge
Dr. Shelp reminded the group of the the recent appointment of one of
their own, Mark Baker, to the position of Director of Advocacy. Baker
brings the experience of a certified peer specialist in addition to an
earlier career as ordained Episcopal priest. He will work directly with
the commissioner. Baker was trained in the certification program that is
among the signature accomplishments of the GMHCN. Training peer
counselors for certification now continues under Fricks's leadership
with the Appalachian Consulting Group,
<http://www.gmhcn.org/ACG/index.html>  which he founded.

As did Fricks before him, Baker intends to use his office to place
consumers' voices at the heart of initiatives, to guarantee that their
recommendations and complaints are addressed without bureaucratic
gymnastics. As an example of how he intends to operate, Baker emailed
the commissioner after hearing someone describe, at an open mic session,
the outrage of being stripped searched while being admitted to a
hospital. The next day, Dr. Shelp announced an investigation of
admissions policies would commence. He appointed Baker to head the
initiative and said consumers will be involved throughout. Work began on
the first Monday following the conference.

"He will look at this with an eye to respect for people's dignity and
human rights," Baker said.

In profound ways, the model of certified peer specialists,
<http://www.stopstigma.samhsa.gov/teleconferences/archive/training/telec
onference09212010.aspx>  articulating self-directed priorities, departs
from the traditional medical model which dwells on the eradication of
symptoms within an ordered hierarchy. Peer specialists work with
individuals to help them gain control over their lives, using resources
that empower based on strengths that are unique to each. That they also
have a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and perhaps an
addiction disorder, means that they have a wealth of experience from
which to offer hope in support of individual accomplishments while
someone builds a self-defined life. 

In Georgia today, peer services can be found in every elbow of the
system, from helping someone find community housing in preparation of
leaving a hospital to providing respite beds and wellness activities
<http://www.gmhcn.org/wellnesscenter/index.html>  and help someone avoid
one. Certified peer specialists do outreach and counseling in prisons
and homeless shelters, they are employed as case managers, on ACT teams,
as job coaches, and they participate on the Georgia Mental Health
Planning and Advisory Council, to which Danton Sealy, a certified peer
specialist, was recently named. In Georgia alone, more than 550 people
have received training to become certified as peer specialists. 

Building on the model of success in consumer-operated programs that the
Report of the Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health
<http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html>
discussed, Georgia led the movement to reimburse peer services with
Medicaid. In the past decade, two dozen states have adopted similar
measures.
<http://www.pillarsofpeersupport.org/final%20%20PillarsofPeerSupportServ
ice%20Report.pdf>  

In significant ways, Georgia's consumer's movement has provided
leadership that is succeeding not only in delivering services but
solidifying its leadership role. What better evidence is there than the
dialogue leading to change, commenced by consumers, embraced by the
commissioner? 

 

http://www.miwatch.org/2010/09/georgias_consumers_list_pr.html 

 

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