News Briefs

Ohio's Voice on Mental Illness
State affiliate of the
National Alliance for the Mentally  Ill

Excerpts from the latest issue of the NAMI Ohio News Briefs:

NAMI Ohio
           Freedom  Project

Goal 2: Mental Health Care Is Consumer and Family Driven

Recommendations:

  • Develop an individualized plan of care for every adult with serious mental illness and child with serious emotional disturbance
  • Involve consumers and families fully in orienting the mental health system toward recovery
  • Align relevant Federal programs to improve access and accountability for mental health services
  • Create a Comprehensive State Mental Health Plan
  • Protect and enhance the rights of people with mental illness

Understanding the Goal

  • The complex mental health system overwhelms many consumers
  • Program efforts overlap
  • Consumers and families do not control their own care
  • Consumers need employment and income supports
  • A shortage of affordable housing exists
  • Limited mental health services are available in correctional facilities
  • Fragmentation is a serious problem at the state level
  • Consumers face difficulty in finding quality employment
  • The use of seclusion and restraint creates risks

Achieving the Goal

  • Develop individualized plans of care for consumers and families
  • Involve consumers and families in planning, evaluation, and services
  • Realign programs to meet the needs of consumers and families
  • Align federal financing for health care
  • “Money follows the individual” rebalancing
  • Community-based alternatives for children in psychiatric residential treatment facilities
  • Respite care services for caregivers
  • Make supported employment services widely available
  • Address mental health problems in the criminal justice and juvenile justice systems
  • Create comprehensive state mental health plans to coordinate services
  • Protect and enhance consumer and family rights
  • End unnecessary institutionalization
  • Eliminate the need to trade custody for mental health care
  • End employment discrimination
  • Reduce the use of seclusion and restraint

NAMI Ohio Action Steps

  1. Advocate to all local systems of care for the need to develop individualized plans of care for every adult with a serious mental illness (SMI) and every child with a serious emotional disorder (SED.)
    • NAMI will promote consumer and family driven mental health care that is grounded in recovery.
    • NAMI will advocate for the recommendations outlined under this goal.
  2. NAMI Ohio will continue to be “Ohio’s Voice on Mental Illness” by setting a high standard of cridibility for state NAMI offices across the country. NAMI Ohio will do this by administering quality programs, increasing membership, maintaining fiscal integrity as reflected by external auditing protocols and striving to diversify our funding base.
  3. NAMI Ohio will manage the CQRT (Consumer Quality Review Team) Project:
    • Monitor daily operations of the two CQRT sites conducting satisfaction surveys with consumers, families and providers in 43 Ohio counties
    • Market the project and the valuable data it generates to promote systemic changes to the mental health system
    • Coordinate and fund all statewide meetings, teleconferences and functions for the project, including those requiring the use of consultants
  4. Plan, coordinate and oversee an annual NAMI conference for families and consumers:
    • Offer special tracks for various topics including law enforcement, cultural competency, children’s issues, legal issues, etc.
    • Annual attendance ranges from 500 to 1000 depending on the size of the venue
  5. Sponsor annual NAMI Ohio kids conference with an emphasis on educational issues for children with mental illness:
    • Targeted attendees include parents, teachers, school administrators and mental health providers
    • Annual attendance at this event ranges from 120 to 250 depending on the size of the venue
  6. Offer technical support to the 60 local NAMI affiliates around Ohio via personal visits, regional meetings, mailings, phone and e-mail emphasizing the need for individualized treatment planning, recovery and other mental health initiatives
  7. Assist in establishing new local affiliates
  8. Provide Family-to-Family educator trainings:
    • Family-to-Family is a free, 12-week education program for people who have a loved one with a mental illness.
    • NAMI Ohio will enhance the Family-to-Family education program by incorporating the goals and recommendations of the Freedom Commission Report.
    • Thity to fifty new educators from counties across Ohio are trained each fiscal year .
    • Family-to-Family is taught in 60 counties across Ohio.
    • An average of 750 families take the Family-to-Family course in Ohio each fiscal year.
    • NAMI Ohio provides updated course manual materials and technical assistance to all 257 certified Family-to_Family instructors in the field.
  9. Provide Support Facilitator trainings:
    • Twenty to thirty new support group facilitators are trained each fiscal year.
  10. Offer special educational opportunities for mental health professionals:
    • Enhance the Provider education program by incorporating the goals and recommendations of the Freedom Commission Report.
    • NAMI has adapted the provider course to better meet the needs of mental health professionals in this time of tight budgets and limited staff time.
    • NAMI Ohio prepares presentations tailored to the need of the host agency. Topics include incorporating families into treatment plans, communication with patients and their families, empathy excersises and other community resources.
    • NAMI Ohio assists host agencies to obtain CEU credits for presentations.

 

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