MENTAL HELL

Valley is one of 19 treatment providers Fleming oversees that are contracted to care for county substance abusers. "Valley delivers some of the very best services you are going to find anywhere," he says. But, he argues the nonprofit's leadership has lost sight of its community missio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSalt Lake City Weekly Vol. 27; no. 1
Main Author Dark, Stephen
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Salt Lake City, Utah Copperfield Publishing, Inc 20.05.2010
Subjects
Budget deficits
Falvo, Debra
Krause, Lynda
Mental health
Mental health care
Mental institutions
Prewitt, Carol
State budgets
Salt Lake County Utah
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Summary:Valley is one of 19 treatment providers Fleming oversees that are contracted to care for county substance abusers. "Valley delivers some of the very best services you are going to find anywhere," he says. But, he argues the nonprofit's leadership has lost sight of its community mission. "Maybe the business game became too important." Fleming sees "the wielding of a budget shortfall as a convenient excuse to change a delivery system." Bottom line, Fleming concludes, "You don't use scare tactics to force clients and staff" into accepting change, particularly when those tactics turn out to be based on inaccurate forecasts. The Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health audits Valley Mental Health every year. That audit, which Valley insiders characterize as at best cursory, nevertheless required in 2006 that Valley and other treatment providers introduce person-centered planning. Clinicians had to listen to consumers' aspirations, rather than simply dictate their care. "What would clients like their life to be like?" explains Rick Hendy, who monitors community mentalhealth centers for the state. "We expect clinicians to get in touch with [clients'] dreams." The state wouldn't pay for "maintaining" clients anymore, he continues. "We are interested in treatment that helps people with recovery." Holly Chapman Blank, a 49 -year-old with bookish glasses, was another Pathways client who feared its end. Pathways "opened a new world for me," she says. When she started, she was so introverted, "I was worse than a wallflower, I was the wall." She found "empowerment and responsibility" at Fresh Start, a series of client-run classes and activities that replaced the socialization aspect of Pathways' services. While higher-functioning Pathways clients have continued to attend Fresh Start and Wellness for Recovery - which provides support classes on schizophrenia and diabetes as well as leadership skills - "a lot of lower functioning clients haven't come back," she says. "Pathways meant a lot to them."