Question
Could you talk a little more specifically about advocacy and how you have advocated for the recovery OT model?
Answer
I think a lot of that has to do with how you present to people. Now, I do a lot of workshops for non-OTs. I do not think it is enough that we just talk to each other. We need to be presenting to groups like NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). We need to be presenting to other peer organizations as well. They can be our best advocates. In several situations, I heard consumers say, "Why don't we have an OT? I heard this OT and it sounds like just like what we need."
I also think using the language very carefully is important. When I first moved up to Trinity County, again a very rural county, they had no idea that OT could even work in mental health. I presented a short-term program and got some OT students up there. They only had to hire me for ten hours a week to cover the supervision. I did that for four years in a row. I had two students every summer and each year. They kept upping my contract because they loved us once they could actually see what we had to offer.
The other thing that I did was develop a short grant on a work skills program, which is different than voc rehab. I was really looking at soft skills. A lot of it had to do with the behavioral expectations of how you hold a job, and I got multiple funding sources for that. Some of it was from the MHSA (Mental Health Services Act) money and I also got money from the Probation Department. Here in California, we had a new bill called AB 109 where they were releasing a lot of prisoners back into the community. They did not know what they were going to do with them. I brought this idea to the sheriff and said, "What do you think?" and got funding for that.
Personally, I think since we are a very hands-on kind of profession, the best kind of advocacy we can do is short-term pilot programs, and then they see what we can really do. That has been my most successful strategy. These ideas are pretty detailed and the handouts went into more stuff than we could possibly cover in an hour. It may take you a while to process it all. Please read it through, reflect on it, process it, and write back to me. I am more than happy to keep up the dialog with any of you.
