PRA Board and Commission Conduct Joint Strategy Meeting

In Fall 2012, the PRA Board of Directors and PRA Commission on Certification convened for three days of intensive planning, including a series of joint Board and Commission meetings focusing on PRA’s representation and training of the workforce of recovery.

“The opportunity for PRA’s key volunteer leaders and staff to jointly focus on the concrete steps we can and will take to better serve the recovery workforce was an amazing experience,” said PRA Board Chair Lisa Razzano, PhD, CPRP. “Both the Board and Commission emerged from these meetings aligned and on a common path to take PRA’s service to the recovery workforce to an entirely new level.”

The changes brought about from this joint strategy meeting will touch all aspects of PRA in 2013, including specific steps in enhancing PRA’s CPRP program, increased opportunity for and access to skills-based training, more focused and streamlined advocacy, and an entirely new Annual Conference framework (see page 3 in this newsletter to the Call for Proposals, which details our new conference framework). From a cultural perspective, all of PRA’s programs will continue to integrate and value persons with lived experience as well as all facets of the multicultural community.

“An added benefit of these joint meetings was the opportunity for the Board and Commission to truly understand and embrace our mutual objective of serving the recovery workforce,” said Mary Alice Brown-Johnston, PhD, CPRP, chair of the PRA Commission on Certification. “The PRA board underscored the value of the work of the Commission and its centricity to a robust future for psychiatric rehabilitation.”

PRA Interim CEO Tom Gibson facilitated the joint elements of the Board and Commission meeting, leveraging the opportunity to more fully engage the subject matter expertise and knowledge of the Commission in creating multiple skills-focused tracks for PSR Practitioners to be unveiled at the 2013 Annual Conference. “The joint gathering of the Board and Commission presented a golden opportunity to harness all that talent to help propel PRA forward,” said Gibson. “It was an opportunity around which the entire PRA headquarters team took full advantage and the work done will inform and strengthen our 2013 program offerings.”

A clear aim that stemmed from the joint meeting is to ensure PRA is and remains a place that embraces persons with lived experience in all dimensions of PRA’s training, credentialing, and advocacy. Said Board Chair Razzano, “PRA’s cultural underpinnings center around inclusivity and opportunity, and it was gratifying to hear the Board and Commission recognize this as among PRA’s central assets.”