Recovery Workforce Summit: PRA 2014 Annual Conference Sessions

"This conference is the best way to stay abreast of current research, information and advancement in the Psychiatric Rehabilitation world, while maintaining your own credentials." - 2013 PRA Annual Conference Attendee
 

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Track 1: CPRP Prep Course

Faculty: Anne Sullivan-Soydan, ScD, CRC, CPRP
Level: Introductory
 
If you intend to take the Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner (CPRP) exam within the next year, this course will provide you with an overview of the development of the credential along with comprehensive training in each of the seven domains that comprise the practice of psychiatric rehabilitation. You'll have an opportunity to take the CPRP practice test, assess your current training needs and offer study skills as you complete your study to for the exam. The course will provide future CPRPs with 10 contact hours toward their educational requirement. Since this is an introductory course, a current CPRP cannot apply this course toward the education requirement for re-certification. 
 
 

Track 2: Core Practitioner Skills Training

Wellness at Work: Tools for Promoting Health in the Workplace Among People in Recovery
Faculty: Nicole J. Pashka, MS, CRC, CPRP; Lisa A. Razzano, PhD, CPRP; Marbella Bolivar, BA; Dori Hutchinson, ScD, CPRP
Level: Intermediate

Numerous studies have identified the ways in which chronic health conditions and physical illnesses are major barriers for individuals in recovery who seek to enter or remain in the labor force. This session is designed to help psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners identify factors related to promoting health and wellness while at work. Presenters will summarize information regarding health disparities among people in recovery, with specific discussion of the ways health conditions may affect employment, and focus on strategies to incorporate wellness into employment and maintain health on the job. Discussion will include factors that can affect employment among individuals in recovery, including a review of tools that can be used within service programs and employment factors for individuals with co-occurring mental and physical health issues.

You Got the Job! Virtual Reality Job Interview Skills Training for People in Recovery
Faculty: Morris Bell, PhD
Level: Introductory

“You Got the Job” is virtual reality training software that allows clients to practice their job interview skills in a simulated conversation with a human resource interviewer. The software also teaches clients how to complete online applications and provides e-learning about how to conduct a job search, including disclosure of disability. The interview is individualized to the particular background of the client, and the software is adapted to ask specialized questions for clients with various barriers to employment, including mental illness, substance abuse, never having had a job, autism, previous incarceration, spinal cord injury, and other physical and hidden disabilities. This software has shown efficacy in improving job interview skills and importantly, in reducing client fears of going on job interviews.

Elements, Strategies and Components of a State Certified Peer Support Training Program
Faculty: Beverly McGuffin, RN, MSN, CPRP; Christina Baca, CRSS; John Anglin; Norma Castaneda
Level: Intermediate

This presentation outlines the framework of a State Certified Recovery Support Specialist Institute (RSSI). Using the adult education fundamentals of didactic teaching, role play, interactive audience discussion, and panel presentation, we will demonstrate what peers learn during a 7-day intensive training. Developed in 2004, the curriculum was built on Psychiatric Rehabilitation Principles by Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioners. The RSSI has trained over 700 people to move into jobs in the public behavioral health system. Taking experiential knowledge and turning this into experiential expertise/wisdom is the key to the Institute. Students come from both mental health and/or substance use arenas.

Adapting Employment Training and Continuing Education for Peer Support to the Diverse Cultural Needs in New Zealand
Faculty: Lisa St George, MSW, CPRP, Peer Support Specialist; Gloria Whyte
Level: Intermediate

There are many training opportunities for people to learn peer support skills. However, it is imperative that a career ladder within the discipline of peer support be an integral part of the work. One way to develop a career ladder is to provide continuing education that enhances skills and builds higher levels of effectiveness. Understanding how to do this across cultures adds an additional and important component to training. New Zealand, with its significantly diverse culture, provides a unique opportunity to develop trainings that are culturally effective and that still provide a foundation for the core values of peer support.

Using Structured Behavioral Interventions to Enhance Mental Health Recovery in Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Faculty: Melanie Bennett, PhD; Thomas Tsuji, MA; Julie McCarthy, MS; Michele Crisafuli, MA
Level: Introductory

Structured behavioral interventions (SBIs) involve teaching and practicing skills to enhance community engagement and attainment of recovery goals in real-world settings. Examples include social, coping, and vocational skills training, along with adaptations for topics related to health behavior change (smoking cessation, weight reduction). Combined with motivational enhancement to define personally relevant applications, SBIs offer consumers recovery-oriented services that are in line with their values and goals, such as employment, independent living, social relationships, and wellness. This course will provide an overview of SBIs, describe implementation in community and VA psychosocial rehabilitation settings, and provide training and practice in conducting SBIs.

Utilizing WRAP and Recovery-Focused Strategies in Jail: A New Hope for Incarcerated Transitional Age Youth
Faculty: Jennifer Gomez; Anthony Marron
Level: Intermediate

Through a partnership created between inmate services at a local jail and a wellness and recovery center serving at-risk young adults, practitioners with lived experience and jail staff have developed an innovative, successful, recovery-based, peer-run approach to working with transitional age youth (TAY) inmates.  Recovery specialists meet on a weekly basis with TAY offenders in the jail and assist them with transitioning into the community through peer support, WRAP classes, goal development, and linkage to mental health services. TAY inmates develop trusting, supportive relationships with the recovery specialists, resulting in decreased rates of recidivism/re-incarceration and increases in successful community re-integration.

Recovery Conversation Starters
Faculty: Sara Mays; Kelly Shuler; Emily Raymond
Level: Introductory

This workshop introduces an activity for supporting self-exploration through writing a very brief statement that captures one’s own life. Some people who are referred for psychiatric rehabilitation services are not engaged with service providers, struggle to come up with personally meaningful goals, and have difficulty articulating their values, interests, and preferences. The activity described in this workshop, Six Word Memoirs, is one way to begin a recovery conversation because exploring where a person has been can set the stage for conversations about the future.

Taking the Lead: Beginner Group Facilitator Training for Inpatient Psychiatric Unit Staff
Faculty: Alexander M. Biondolillo, PhD
Level: Introductory

This presentation will focus on outlining and disseminating a training program for providing group facilitation competencies to professionals who have direct milieu contact with individuals on an inpatient psychiatric unit but have no prior experience leading groups. The training program focuses on developing trainees’ skills in managing group process, constructing population appropriate psycho-educational content that takes into account group facilitators’ professional expertise, and in fostering staff buy-in on the importance of providing groups tailored to the needs of the individuals on their unit. 

Track 3: Advanced Practitioner Skills Training

Ending Self-Stigma: An Intervention to Reduce Self-Stigma and Enhance Recovery
Faculty: Amy Drapalski, PhD; Alicia Lucksted, PhD; Katrina Vorce, MS; Cynthia Clark, RNC
Level: Intermediate

Dealing with stigma and self-stigma are essential to recovery. However, few organized resources are available to help people and/or programs address self-stigma and its effects. Participants in this interactive workshop will learn about Ending Self-Stigma (ESS), a 9-session group intervention designed to reduce self-stigma and its negative effects. Participants will review the strategies/tools included in this intervention and learn how to use and teach several of these strategies/tools to minimize self-stigma. Findings from research studies regarding the effectiveness of the intervention, as well as practical considerations concerning the use of ESS in clinical settings will be discussed.

Implementing “No-Force-First” as a Best Practice
Faculty: Eugene Johnson; Lori Ashcraft
Level: Intermediate

Based on Recovery Innovations experiences early in 2000, a “No-Force-First” (NFF) policy was clearly articulated in 2006. NFF quickly became a dynamic force throughout the organization transforming the way recovery services were delivered in all levels of care, including crisis services. Adopting NFF principles requires the development and implementation of a strong and courageous organizational structure. This structure must encompass the recruiting, hiring, training, supporting, nurturing, and mentoring activities necessary to ensure the beliefs and values key to NFF are hard-wired and pervasive in all operational facets. The main areas of focus for these activities include advancing the concepts of the recovery pathways, recovery coaching, principles of peer support, and the development of a recovery environment.

Integrating Functional Skills into Acute Psychiatric Settings
Faculty: Caitlin Synovec, MS, OTR/L; Tess Lichtenstein, MS, OTR/L
Level: Intermediate

Although the primary focus of inpatient psychiatric admissions is often symptom reduction and management, occupational therapy can play an important role within these settings to promote recovery and increase a client’s ability to reintegrate into their communities. Skill-specific interventions result in faster and more successful community reintegration and can increase perceived control, confidence in performance, and increase occupational engagement once in the community. As many mental health practitioners implement group treatment sessions on inpatient units, integrating skills-based and functional activities can assist consumers in increasing self-efficacy in performance, teach/practice skills, and problem solve barriers encountered in the community.

Trauma-Informed Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services
Faculty: Lisa A. Razzano, PhD, CPRP; Marie M. Hamilton, LCSW, MPH; Nicole J. Pashka, MS, CRC, CPRP
Level: Intermediate

For decades, research and evaluation in psychiatric rehabilitation services have documented high rates of trauma among individuals in recovery. These experiences, whether physical, emotional, or sexual, may result in increased mental health symptoms, continued substance use, and other consequences affecting the vulnerability of individuals. These issues will be addressed using three core segments: 1) a brief summary of the impact of trauma on mental health; 2) discussion of PSR services that support identification of and recovery from trauma; 3) demonstration of tools and materials that can be used to address the crucial needs of those in recovery that have experienced trauma.

Living Well: Improve Self-Management of Medical Illness for People in Recovery 
Faculty: Richard Goldberg, PhD; Michael Longazel; Valerie Price; Elana Schwartz
Level: Advanced

Participants in this interactive workshop will review the topics included in a professional-peer co-facilitated group class called Living Well, a program designed to improve self-management of medical illness for individuals with serious mental illness. Participants will learn how to use and teach a range of behavioral and motivational strategies to help improve medical wellness self-management and support recovery. The workshop will be co-led by professional and peer providers who are currently delivering the intervention in the context of a large VA research trial.

Risk and Recovery: Engaging People in Addressing Safety
Faculty: Elizabeth Whitney, LICSW; Lisa Walker, LMHC
Level: Intermediate

Psychiatric rehabilitation providers commonly cite the “dignity of risk” as a grounding principle. This phrase reflects our understanding that personal growth relies on lived experience and often involves unexpected outcomes and even “failure.” It also serves as a reminder to staff that decisions made by people using services are theirs to make, even when we disagree or worry about the results. Practitioners are less prepared, however, when our concern has to do with significant behavioral risk: suicide, violence, and other highly dangerous behaviors. We struggle the most at times like these to remain recovery oriented. This workshop will present a framework for addressing significant risk while remaining person centered.   

The Importance of Change Talk
Faculty: Melanie Kinley
Level: Advanced

Change talk is a critical element of the early stages of behavioral change. Eliciting, responding to, and reinforcing change talk is a core skill of motivational interviewing. Yet, most practitioners fail to recognize it and expand on it in the course of building therapeutic rapport and collaborative goals. Research has demonstrated that clients engaging in change talk are more likely to move into the action stage of recovery than those who do not. Workers in the recovery field can improve their effectiveness as change agents by understanding what change talk is, how it emerges, how to reinforce and sustain it, and ultimately, how to transform it into change behavior. Participants will be given opportunities to practice responding to both change and sustain talk, practice asking open-ended questions designed to elicit change talk, and demonstrate reflections, summaries, and other techniques for capitalizing on a consumer’s verbal behaviors.

A Thousand Paper Cuts: Addressing the Impact of Diversity Dynamics
Faculty: Brenda J. Weaver, MA, CPRP
Level: Advanced

Psychiatric Rehabilitation practitioners recognize that culture is tightly interwoven into every aspect of human life. Culture is the context that shapes and defines all activity and is central, not peripheral, to creating inclusive environments that support the recovery process. This interactive workshop forwards the conversations to celebrate our differences, while recognizing the unspoken impact of our cultures. The session will stimulate introspection and learning for the continuing purpose of learning, healing, and transformation. Note: this workshop is framed toward advancing CPRP Domain VII: Diversity and Cultural Competency.

Track 4: Business Management & Operations for PSR Professionals

Recovery Roadmap: Preview of an Innovative Multimedia Training Tool to Support Person-Centered Planning
Faculty: Janis Tondora, PsyD
Level: Advanced

This workshop will preview the Recovery Roadmap, a highly innovative, web-based training tool to support practitioners and service users in partnering on the co-creation of person-centered recovery plans (PCRPs). The Roadmap tool, currently under development by the Center for Social Innovation and the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, includes two companion components. The first component guides people in recovery through the completion of engaging pre-planning activities that prepare them to more actively partner in the PCRP process. The second component builds competencies among direct care providers through the use of interactive, case-based video scenarios that simulate PCRP interactions.

Building Happy Teams: Applying Recovery Principles in the Workplace to Energize Staff
Faculty: Julie C. McCormick, MSW, LCSW, CPRP; Alexandria Smith, MSW, LCSW
Level: Intermediate

Psychiatric rehabilitation services require highly skilled and dedicated practitioners. Recruitment and retention of quality staff members are key to successful programs. While complex healthcare systems require mental health organizations to accomplish high volumes of workload with limited resources, effective leaders infuse the workplace with values of hope, empowerment, respect, and choice, to motivate and support staff. This workshop will discuss how happy teams build on the strengths (e.g. cultural diversity, professional disciplines, personal qualities) and skills of individual team members, allow for flexibility in roles, and provide a safe environment to develop interests and receive feedback. Stand-alone and ongoing strategies to build and maintain a positive organizational culture and climate will be presented.

Getting the Job Done:  Embedding Vocational Peer Support in Your Organization
Faculty: Debbie Nicolellis, MS, CRC; Lyn Legere, MS, CPRP, CPS
Level: Intermediate

Vocational Peer Support (VPS) is an approach to peer support that gives peer specialists the information, skills, and tools they need to support vocational aspirations. VPS training supports staying true to the peer support role while supporting vocational recovery; the VPS approach gives peers unique and complementary roles in supporting employment within an organization.  Now being used in several states, the developers of VPS reflect on what it takes to embed VPS in a program or system for lasting effect and best outcomes, including strategies such as tailoring job descriptions, policies, procedures, supervision, and training.

They Call it Work, but it Can Be Fun: Staff Acquisition and Retention Through an Agency-Wide Recovery Culture
Faculty: Cheryl Glass, MBA-HCM, CHES, CPRP; Andy Bernstein, PhD, CPRP; Rebecca Hyson, CRSS, BHT; Brenda Nunez-Lopez, RN, BSN, CRSS
Level: Intermediate

Using a combination of didactic and interactive teaching methods including role-playing a mock interview, we will explore workforce recruitment and interview processes that create diverse, well-functioning teams, and workforce retention strategies that reduce employee turnover and maintain a high quality of service. We will also address how to develop a recovery-oriented organizational culture that produces a strength-based and staff-affirming work environment, outstanding service delivery, and high customer satisfaction scores among service recipients.

Helping Your Staff Feel Safe and Secure: Supporting Their Strategies
Faculty: Mark Ragins
Level: Advanced

After a dangerous incident, staff can lose their sense of safety and security, trust and morale can deteriorate, and administration often investigates “to make sure it never happens again” rather than strengthening the program’s inherent resilience. A hierarchy of proactive strategies includes: Relying on outside force for safety; Relying on separation and isolation for protection; Relying on leadership and/or staff cohesiveness; Relying on relationships and familiarity with clients; Relying on clients allying with staff; Relying on strong program culture. Each strategy has different strengths and weaknesses and requires different skills to be effective.

Forget the Crystal Ball: 5 Ways to Future-Proof Your Agency Using Data
Faculty: David Bucciferro; Ellen Healion
Level: Intermediate

With regulations on healthcare delivery coming down constantly and quickly, many providers are scrambling to predict what it will take to survive in the newly emerging landscape of care. The answer: data-driven planning. This session offers specific strategies for using data and metrics to help agencies eliminate guessing and create a platform for growth that is strong and agile enough to face whatever changes are sure to come. Building on the principles of accountability, accessibility, and affordability, attendees will learn how to create a base of knowledge that will help them operate more efficiently and economically while improving their quality of person-centered care. Drawing on decades of experience using data to support decision-making at all levels, the presenters can offer the perspective of legislators, direct care providers, administrators, and other stakeholders for a discussion about what you can do to prepare your organization to face the coming changes in a way that will best support your staff, your clients, and your positioning as an agency of the future.

Improving Outcomes: A Recovery-Focused Learning Collaborative Approach to Incorporating Best Practices into Your Organizational Culture
Faculty: Kim MacDonald-Wilson, ScD, CPRP, CRC; Shari Hutchison, MS
Level: Intermediate

Managers and directors want to find the most effective and efficient ways to train staff to use recovery-focused best practices, often with limited resources. Faculty will present a Learning Collaborative model to implement a practice involving people in making decisions about their recovery, health, and wellness, and the impact of using this approach. Strategies for starting, sustaining, and spreading the practice will be described. Participants will practice using components of this approach and planning skills and supports needed to become a continuous learning organization.

Supercharged Supervision: Professional Development for the Front-Line Supervisor
Faculty: David R. Selden
Level: Introductory

The typical behavioral health front-line supervisor spends a few (sometimes many) years as a clinician, demonstrates some skill with patients and in interpersonal relationships with staff, and then qualifies, in the eyes of upper management, for a promotion to supervisor. However, the skills needed to be a good clinician and colleague are not always the same as those needed to be a good front-line supervisor. In fact, many new skills are needed to succeed in this role. This course is a highly interactive training experience designed to provide some of the skill sets, tools and techniques vital to the success of the front-line supervisor in the behavioral healthcare organization.

Track 5: Organization Strategy & Leadership for PSR Executives

The Affordable Care Act: Survive and Flourish During this Healthcare Shift
Faculty: Mark Ishaug
Level: Advanced

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act presents challenges and opportunities for more robust liaisons between behavioral health and healthcare providers. This seminar will use Illinois and Thresholds’ partnerships as the background for a negotiation and integration case study. Participants will learn and practice strategies for negotiation, strategic partnership, and assurance of best practices. Illinois presents somewhat unique and complex issues with regard to healthcare due to the myriad of changes cascading in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. Many states are negotiating similar complex situations as we position ourselves to survive, thrive, and grow in the integrated care environment.

Supporting Recovery-Based Career Development
Faculty: Mark Ragins
Level: Intermediate / Advanced

For staff to be able to support their clients’ personal growth and development they need to be supported in the same ways with their personal growth and development. Rather than thinking about staff as being trained before they come to work, we can describe a set of person centered competencies that should evolve throughout their career. A staff person’s strengths and weaknesses can be assessed at every stage of his career, and he can be given support to build on his competencies. Specific strategies to promote development include shared goal setting, field based supervision, mentoring, and developmentally directed motivation will be included.

Creating a Recovery Culture to Thrive in Turbulent Times
Faculty: Roy Starks; Shawna McGuckin
Level: Advanced

The Mental Health Center of Denver has partnered with multiple agencies through a national learning collaborative to measure recovery and create recovery-focused systems of services. The collaborative is demonstrating great results, having created agencies committed to recovery cultures which result in improved services for the people served. This workshop will demonstrate how to create a group of behavioral healthcare agencies using common measures to support recovery transformation. The workshop will also address the domain of creating system competency, which moves centers toward systems which truly promote the recovery of the people served. We will also demonstrate how this transformation will enable agencies to flourish in times of changing funding streams and the need for integrated care.

Pioneers Initiate Psychiatric Rehabilitation in Pakistan: Leadership Growth During Challenging Experiences
Faculty: Barbara Granger, PhD CPRP; Shaheen Ahmed; Veronica Carey, PhD CPRP
Level: Intermediate

As psychiatric rehabilitation grows internationally, we learn more about how we are strengthened, challenged, and what we need to bring to different communities. Until COL Pakistan/USA introduced psych rehab to Pakistan 5 years ago, then started Recovery House, Pakistan did not have psych rehab and only had limited MH services. This workshop highlights leadership strategies for starting new psych rehab programs, hiring/training staff, and reaching out to families. Strong leadership requires passion, flexibility, and determination to find the ways to build capacity on the ground and in existing medical, nongovernmental, and family networks to achieve initial successes – a familiar theme to those starting up psych rehab in any country, including the US.

The Ethics of Self-Disclosure: Bringing Nuance to Content and Process
Faculty: Andy Bernstein, PhD, CPRP
Level: Intermediate

Although an essential element in the professional repertoire of peer providers, self-disclosure has long been a problematic concept for more traditionally trained mental health providers. This workshop attempts to place self-disclosure firmly within the ethical behavior of all psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners when practiced in a mindful, nuanced, and culturally sensitive. We will identify the specific ethical principles in psych rehab which address self-disclosure, examine the difference between content and process disclosures, and together develop guidelines for when, how, and why disclosure of each type might be used both in practice and supervision. We will also address caveats and situations in which less might be better.

Workforce Development: Collaboration Between Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioners and Educators
Faculty: Nora Barrett; Peter Basto, Zakia Clay; Anthony Zazzarino
Level: Intermediate

Incorporating student interns from various disciplines into psychiatric rehabilitation programs is an effective workforce development strategy with the potential to both enhance the quality of services and grow a workforce that is highly committed to the practice of psych rehab. However, the development of quality psych rehab practicum experiences has become more challenging in recent years. From the agency perspective, challenges include finding time for student supervision and addressing conflicts between agency policy and student assignments. Educators also face challenges such as finding sites and supervisors that match program and accreditation standards. This course will provide a forum for interactive discussion focused on identifying strategies that support the development of future psych rehab practitioners.

Having Our Cake and Eating It Too:  Promoting Recovery in a Managed Care Environment
Faculty: Dave Pilon, PhD; Debbie Innes-Gomberg, PhD
Level: Intermediate

More and more, public mental health systems are turning to managed care principles and organizations in an attempt to increase service delivery capacity and reduce the increasing costs of behavioral healthcare. What does this mean for the clients we serve and for our mission to promote their recovery from mental illness? This workshop will describe a pilot program that attempts to improve recovery outcomes while at the same time increasing the flow of clients from higher levels to lower levels of care, thereby reducing costs and increasing system capacity.

Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Youth Certified Peer Counseling: Developing a Recovery-Oriented Workforce for Youth in Transition
Faculty: Stephanie Kay Lane, MSW, LMHP, CPC; Tamara Johnson, CPC ; Evangeline Rund, CPC; Lonnie Plugman, CPC
Level: Introductory

Washington State has become a forerunner in the development of Medicaid billable youth in transition certified peer counseling. Youth with lived experience in behavioral health, who are in recovery, can now help other youth find their way to recovery –and get paid for it!  Certified Peer Youth Counselors also have a unique role in assisting youth in transition and young adults navigate the new healthcare system. Come to this fun, innovative, and interactive workshop to learn how Washington State is developing a recovery oriented workforce for youth in transition with lived experience in the systems that serve them.

Track 6: Hot Topics and Emerging Issues in Health Care and PSR

Academic Credit as a Springboard to Peer Career Development
Faculty: Jessica Wolf, PhD; Eric Grant, LCSW
Level: Intermediate

Thousands of peer workers are currently trained in non-academic settings in the US, making educational credentials essential for career progress and promotion. This workshop discussion will describe a community college mental health certificate demonstration program that successfully prepared students from diverse cultural backgrounds with lived experience of behavioral health conditions for entry-level positions. Many employed program graduates continued their education to associate, bachelor, and master levels. Workshop faculty will speak from experience about academic credentials’ impact on peer careers. Curriculum, student interaction, field placements, and provider/educator partnerships will also be addressed to assist participants to consider creation of academic programs.

Adapting the Individual Placement & Support (IPS) Model of Supported Employment for Early-Emerging Adults with Serious Mental Health Conditions
Faculty: Marsha Langer Ellison, PhD; Marc Fagan, PsyD; Vanessa Vorhies Klodnick, LCSW
Level: Intermediate

There is a dearth of evidence-based practices (EBP’s) specifically designed for young adults (16-25). Developmentally tailoring adult-system EBP’s can improve outcomes and increase service engagement. The Individual Placement & Support Model of Supported Employment was adapted by adding education support and peer mentors. During the session we’ll describe lessons learned through implementation and a feasibility study that identified the need for: peer mentor role clarification, separate employment and education specialist roles, and vocational service integration with clinical/transition services. Nearly half of the 31 participants worked or enrolled in school over 12-months. These findings have implications for future service adaptations and evaluation efforts for young adults.

Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Recovery in a Global Context
Faculty: Gilberte Bastien, PhD; Viara Quiñones, PhD
Level: Introductory

This presentation will discuss psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery as a framework for addressing the mental health needs of individuals and communities in a global context. Strategies gleaned from work with acculturating populations in the US and individuals recovering from the 2010 earthquake in Haiti will be outlined. We will discuss considerations for cross-cultural importation of mental healthcare with an emphasis on strategies for capturing the benefits of an evidence-based psychological approach without disrupting local perspectives. Finally, we will present challenges, successes, and efforts to evaluate an evidence-informed and community based model for culturally competent psychiatric work in a global context.

Will the ACA's Medicaid Changes Improve Outcomes for Schizophrenia? A New Jersey Case Study
Faculty: Tom Pyle, MBA, MS, CPRP
Level: Intermediate

Implementation of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is bringing big changes to the Medicaid system. In many states, the changes include a) moving Medicaid funded behavioral health to managed care, b) expanding Medicaid’s roles by 25%, and c) reforming Medicaid's rate-setting and payment  methods. Will these changes improve recoveries for Medicaid beneficiaries diagnosed with schizophrenia? Using New Jersey as a case study, this presentation will consider five change domains by which to classify and evaluate elements of the coming changes to Medicaid relevant to psychiatric rehabilitation. It will review the requirements of care for schizophrenia, parameters of recovery from schizophrenia, outcomes and measures of progress with schizophrenia, and the Medicaid system today that funds treatments of schizophrenia. It will then examine the elements of three major Medicaid changes as they relate to New Jerseyans diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Telling Recovery Stories Through Digital Storytelling
Faculty: Kerrie Mills, LCSW; Renée Magaña, MA, ATR-BC, CBIS
Level: Introductory

This workshop will include a description of digital storytelling and outline how this modality was used at a VA hospital to help Veterans with mental health issues tell their recovery stories. We will describe the technology used for this group and other resources available for making digital stories. This presentation will include data from life domain questionnaires given to participants and examples of digital stories will be used. Digital storytelling is a powerful way of utilizing technology to assist people in telling their recovery stories in a therapeutic way that does not seem as daunting as traditional therapy.

Dual Recovery: Recovery Coaching and Peer Support
Faculty: Iden Campbell McCollum; Lisa Chaplin Hobbs
Level: Introductory

Recovery coaching was developed as a way to bridge the gap between a client leaving a treatment center and entering long-term recovery. It has been found that 80% of the clients leaving a treatment center will relapse within ninety days. William White and other researchers developed the Recovery Management Model in the 1990’s. This model recognized that if a client leaving a treatment center had someone to work with immediately upon discharge, introducing them to 12 step programs, addiction treatment specialists, and working through triggers or life problems that previously would result in addictive behavior, the likelihood of that client relapsing would be reduced significantly. This session will outline the role of a recovery coach and describe the benefits of providing access to them.

Modern Family, Modern Medicine: Incorporating Family Services into Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Faculty: Alana DiPesa, MSW
Level: Introductory

Family involvement is a central component to successful psychiatric rehabilitation. Accordingly, there has been a recent push for recovery-oriented programs to better incorporate families into mental health treatment. This presentation will detail a needs assessment and implementation of family services within a VA mental health service line. Specifically, guidance on conducting a needs assessment of family services and a model for designing and implementing a psychoeducational group for families will be provided. Facilitating factors and barriers will be addressed and there will be an opportunity for an interactive discussion on how idiosyncratic aspects of participants’ practice settings may impede or support similar efforts.

Utilizing the Recovery Model in Forensic Settings:  Benefits and Barriers
Faculty: Jennifer Mackler, PhD; Leonardo Caraballo, PsyD
Level: Intermediate

Participants will be introduced to the systemic and cultural challenges of implementing recovery-oriented services within forensic settings (particularly, inpatient forensic settings), including an examination of conflicting principles. The benefits of utilizing the recovery model for both individuals served and providers will be highlighted. Recommendations for the integration of the recovery model in forensic settings will be reviewed with discussion of case examples and international efforts to implement recovery in this challenging setting. Special considerations for adapting assessment and intervention approaches with forensic individuals will also be addressed.