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The CT evaluation will be a partnership endeavor with Advocacy Unlimited (AU), the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and the University of Connecticut (UCONN). Advocacy Unlimited, Inc. is a consumer-operated program that was established in order to prepare persons with psychiatric disabilities to be effective advocates for themselves and others. Begun in 1994 as the Community Advocacy Education Division of the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, AU has graduated more than 85 students who are deeply committed to the belief that all persons with mental health disabilities should have access to the same rights, privileges, and opportunities afforded to the community-at-large. Graduates of the program advocate not only for themselves, but for their peers and others at the community, systems, and legislative levels. Before even entering into the program, prospective students agree to be visible, vocal, and vigorous defenders of the civil rights of persons with disabilities. They further acknowledge that they, as individual members of a grassroots movement, are part of a much larger fellowship of consumers. With this comes the commitment to becoming actively involved in legislative issues, media accountability, policy planning, system oversight, etc. They become key players in a statewide network of consumers and consumer supporters who realize that for real change and positive action to occur, the consumer voice must be heard on all advisory groups, planning councils, task forces, agency boards, and the like. They know that the time is now to assert their right to determine their own destinies. In service of AU and their fellow consumers, graduate-advocates complete a 6-month internship, during which they provide individualized advocacy, facilitate community education workshops, and actively work to broaden and strengthen the work of the consumer network in Connecticut. These advocate-graduates have offered supportive advocacy services on more than 800 occasions; they have conducted more than 700 workshops and trainings; they have expanded the network to include more than 1500 people who currently subscribe to the AU newsletter. The project will be a randomized controlled trial to determine the ways and extent to which an existing consumer operated program, AU, impacts recovery as compared to traditional services alone. We will also evaluate the cost effectiveness of AU=s advocacy training program by comparing the service and other costs for consenting consumers receiving both the consumer-operated AU training program and traditional community services to those receiving only the traditional community services. We will recruit adults with serious mental illness (N=160) who have been accepted in AU=s advocacy training program. These individuals will be randomly assigned to enroll in the program immediately, or placed on a waiting list to enroll in the program after one year. Consumers who receive training will be compared to those who do not with respect to: (1) outcomes such as empowerment, housing, employment, social inclusion, use of services, and satisfaction with services, and (2) costs related to mental health care. All participants will be interviewed at baseline, 4 months, 8 months, and 12 months. A comprehensive cost-effectiveness analysis will be conducted. Susan Essock, Ph.D. is the Principal Investigator for the COSP CT Evaluation. Dr. Essock is a Professor and Director of the Division of Health Services Research at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. The mission of the Division of Health Services Research is to generate knowledge to improve services for people with mental illness by conducting rigorous evaluations of public and private sector services. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Essock was the Director of Psychological Services at the Connecticut Department of Mental health and Addiction Services. She has been the PI on several randomized, controlled trials. She continues her more than 10 year relationship with DMHAS as a Senior Research Scientist. Yvette Sangster is the founder and Executive Director of Advocacy Unlimited. She is the Co-Investigator for the COSP CT Evaluation. She designed the program at a time when she had already developed her own advocacy skills as the mother of a teenager who had a traumatic brain injury and a host of system and service obstacles. She fought hard to have her son’s needs met and to prove that a once-hopeless prognosis was entirely wrong. She succeeded on both fronts and ultimately decided to apply the same determination to persons, like herself, with psychiatric disabilities. With experience from within and without the mental health system, Sangster was well-equipped to carve out a place for a non-traditional program like AU. Today she is widely known for her tenacity and ability to motivate and promote the very real concept of recovery from mental illness. She receives requests from as far away as London, England to help others develop advocacy education programs. Yvette Sangster and Susan Essock represent the project on the National Steering Committee.
Contacts:Susan Essock (Principle Investigator)
Yvette Sangster Advocacy Unlimited: |
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