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What’s Up in BC ; September 2009
The Provincial Working Group on Supporting Families with Parental Mental Illness met via conference call on Wednesday, Sept 16th, with the main focus being to share information. The following is an accounting of some of the activity noted related the issues of families where the parent has a mental illness (PMI) or mental health challenge. Most of it has to do with programs, program development and various forms of research. Hazel Meredith, BC Schizophrenia Society (BCSS) in Victoria was inspired by the work of Dr. Michelle Sherman and as a result has been building support for the offering of a multi session psycho-educational program for teens living in the Victoria area. As well she has made contact with Dr. Bonnie Leadbeater from U. Vic and is exploring the possibilities for research and program evaluation. Dr. Roxanne Still, Mental Health Consultant for Child and Youth Mental Health, Vancouver Island supported the value of this initiative. The are also offering a Kids in Control group. Hazel also spoke about a number of resources that Michael will post on the website, including a resource for mental health providers, administrators, family advocates, policy-makers or those wishing to work with families in formal mental health systems. And Families as Partners in Care Implementation Guidebook: http://www.world-schizophrenia.org/publications/ Roz Walls has continued to work with a strong community table from a community development model in Richmond and is now in a phase of building programs for kids and families which was part of the recommendation from the focus groups held last years with parents. The groups began in the spring and in October the second group for 8-12 year olds will begin. The group model combines information from the Kids in Control and Building Resilient In Kids. Richmond has also now contracted with Canadian Mental Health to have the Super Saturday Club one Saturday a month. Anne Stack has a committee in Kelowna made up of people who are deeply connected with parts of “ the system” and able to bring the perspective of PMI. There group has made an intention effort to focus on families and communities as the unit of intervention. There are a number of research components coming from them, including Anne’s MA thesis which is a qualitative work describing experiences of parents with mental illness who are also service providers. Anne hopes to build on this in her doctoral work commencing in January. Anne had also been in Boston and visited with Dr. Joanne Nicholson and visited the Family Options program, which is a family centered program for members of a mental health clubhouse. Mark and Rob had visited Family Options the year prior and found it a phenomenal program for family reunification for people with serious mental illness. It demonstrates how therapeutic family connections can be for people with serious mental illness. There should be research coming out about this program. Angela Guy is working with Vancouver Coastal Health in the communities of North Shore (ie North Van), Squamish/Whistler, Powell River & Sunshine Coast. Her mission is to interview service providers (her target is around 60 interviews) and will develop a report that documents the needs as they perceive them. Sharon Von Volkingburgh spoke about Vancouver since Lisa Clarke’s project ended and the number of valuable tools and trainings she left behind. Some of these resources will soon be on our website, www.parentalmentalillness.org. The Super Saturday Club is now in its fifth year of operation and growing. Super Saturday provides support and recreation for children whose parents has mental illness. As the program grows they are considering ways to incorporate a psycho educational component. Doris Bodnar from reproductive mental health at BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital continues to be active in the development of resources in the perinatal area and of late has developed a resource for aboriginal women which she may pilot in the Fraser Region in consultation with Mark Littlefield. As well, there are quarterly perinatal rounds via video conference throughout the province where these issues are raised. Rob suggested they think about having a special focus on Ulysses Agreements for this group. Dr. Reebye, Infant Psychiatry at BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital spoke about her work in the development of tools for social workers related to parental capacity and how the focus is on helping workers to look at function and not mental illness. They have completed training for some on this and may be further elaborating the model. Mark Littlefield spoke about his ongoing work with the BCSS “Ulysses Agreement” project in Fraser Region and that many of the referrals over the past three years have come from child welfare social workers. A new focus of the work will be to engage Child and Youth Mental Health to a greater degree. As well, Fraser MCFD has a commitment to forums based on our community development and education manual every 4 years. This year Mark is working with the communities of White Rock and Delta to consider a forum. Last year he worked with Hope and Mission. Neil Mercer completed his MA thesis as a qualitative study of Mark’s Ulysses Agreement Program. Neil interviewed affected parents and professionals. There was solid support for the program overall and some recommendations for improvement. Neil will be presenting his research at the First World COPMI conference in Australia at the end of October. Neil has also picked up the torch related to any future training in Abbotsford about the Beardslee model. Grant Charles UBC School of Social Work spoke about the “Workforce Study” based on a sample of over 200 professionals working in adult mental health, child welfare and child and youth mental health in Fraser Region. This work was supported by a grant from the Child and Youth Health Research Network. The data is all collected and the data analysis is under way. It will provide an opportunity from the research team of Drs Nicole Chovil, Rob Lees, Grant Charles and David Brown to give feedback to manager and executive in both Mental Health and Addictions and MCFD throughout the region which could inform policy, training and practice. This research is also linked to a similar research project in Australia with Dr. Darryl Maybery as the same research survey tool has been used. This may allow for comparisons between samples in the two countries. Grant also spoke about his young carer research and the invisibility of these children, how in North America we have tended to see these children from a pathology lens, calling them “parentified” whereas in the UK and Australia there are large movements of “young carers” that provide normalization and support. Rob Lees mentioned that plans were underway for developing protocols among five major systems throughout Fraser Region namely, child welfare, child and youth mental health, adult mental health, addiction services and health prevention/promotion (ie. public health ) Rob also spoke about his membership on the International Advisory Group to the Australian National COPMI Initiative. This group, with members from Boston, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia are talking about the development of a position paper on families with parents with mental illness. There will be further talk and planning towards this end at the October World Conference.
Nicole Chovil spoke about the FORCE Society for Kids Mental Health application for a major funding grant from Canada’s Public Health Agency. Dr. Connie Coliglio from the provincial Mental Health Literacy Project located at Children’s and Women’s Hospital and her team assisted the Force in development of this proposal. If funded it would provided the funds for; 1. a pilot project of the Beardslee model in at least two regions of the province 2) the development of a position paper that would scope the issues and become a platform for further direction in the province around parental mental health and 3) lead to a conference that connects researchers with families.
Hylda Gryba, CYMH team leader for Hope congratulated Doris Bodnar on the resource she developed for Aboriginal Perinatal Health and how useful it had been with Hylda recently presented in an Aboriginal Community.
Michael Gallo, our wed master and most long distance member, called in from his doctoral studies in California. There have been over 12000 visits to the site. Grant Charles proposed that most of these were Rob checking in while bored on Saturday nights! Michael clarified that most of these didn’t come from Chilliwack where Rob lives, in fact they come from all over Canada, USA, Australia and Germany. Those who don’t currently have a picture on the website, please send it to Michael!
Reflecting on the Desiree Blume paper of 2004 that documents progress from the second major forum held in 1999, we have made progress on the Four Ps: programs, practices, policies and protocols. (http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/mental_health/publications.htm ; Supporting Families with Parental Mental Illness: Findings of the Forum 2004) Most however has been in the program development area where we see programs like Super Saturday, and psycho educational programs like Kids in Control and Resilient kids, or Ulysses Agreements slowly growing into the service culture.
The group is agreed to meet via teleconference again on Wednesday December 16th at 4 pm.
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