North Carolinas Grade

1
North Carolinas Grade

• Some hope for the future

Deby Dihoff, Executive Director, NAMI NC
2
Collaboration with DMHDDSAS

• Met with full Executive Leadership Team 2/6/07
• Pledge from Director Moseley to return with a
  written plan to address some areas needing
  improvement
• Held meetings with Mike Moseley and Mike
  Lancaster on grade improvement

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What areas have improved?

• NC General Assembly allocated 93 M in 06 to
  Mental Health statewide
• This will improve our status from the current
  43rd per capita in mental health spending
• CIT implementation has support 4 existing
  communities (Pitt, Wake, Winston-Salem, Vance)
  with many others in the development stage

4
Specific requests to the Division

• Restoration of benefits post incarceration (0/2)
• Consumer and Family Monitoring Teams (0/2)
• Reduction of use of seclusion/restraint (0/3)
• Support for CIT statewide implementation

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LOC Recommendations

• Purpose of LOC
• Disclaimer its early, things change
• Concern that since money wasnt used in 06
  appropriations, why should legislators allocate
  more?

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Proposal l

• Build community infrastructure
• 113 M in 07-08 Total
• ll5 M in 08-09 Total
• Additional Housing Assistance

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Proposal l continued

• 24 Hour Transitional residential treatment
  program (alternate to rest homes)
• Uniform screening of those admitted to a facility
• 20M year one, 30M year two to expand crisis
  services
• 5M state psychiatric hospital pilot (reduce
  admits by increasing crisis services)

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Assistance to Law Enforcement

• Add l5 additional jail diversion programs
• Money for technical assistance and training of
  CIT teams

9
Trust Fund

• Repeals language that allows money for state
  hospital repair, construction
• Restricts money to community expansion

10
Policy Improvements

• Increase flexibility of funds (single stream
  funding) for four more LMEs
• Establishes rate tiers for new community support
  definitions
• 30 M each year for new mental health services
• Uniform sliding fee scale
• Expand commitment pilot program to five more LMEs

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What can you do?

• Contact your legislators
• Ask them to support LOC recommendations
• Ask for them to support parity
• Support anti death penalty draft bill (Kinnaird)
  for those who were severely mentally ill at the
  time of the commission of the crime

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What will this accomplish

• We need more money to build community services
• This infusion of ll3 M if spent correctly will
  go a long ways towards improving the lives of
  those who live with mental illness
• It will take years to make up for the financial
  neglect of services