News from Coast Mental Health

Coast Mental Health Weekly Update Thank you for registering to receive Coast Mental Health's weekly update. Courage To Come Back Awards After 6 hours of deliberations, the final selection panellists gather for a photo.  Lorne Segal - far left - hosted the event facilitated by Coast's Program Directors,  Cathy Taylor and Beata Zaleksa (2nd & 3rd in front row left of Lorne)  Last Thursday, a diverse group of 18 panellists arrived at the Coast offices to review the finalists for the 2012 Courage To Come Back Awards.   Beginning at 7:30 a.m. and finishing just after 1:00, the panellists arrived at the six recipients for the 2012 Awards.   This culminates an extensive process including: The Nominations launch in early January at Scotiabank.  A publicity campaign to advertise the process throughout BC Receiving 130 nominations from every corner of the Province Six selection panels in early March to arrive at the category finalists for the awards.                   -              Beginning April 9th, our Media partners - The Province, News 1130, Fairchild Media, will be profiling one recipient a week until the week of the 17th of May - when we are hoping to have more than 1,000 people join us in celebrating the achievements of these remarkable people. Tickets to the May 17th Courage to Come Back awards are available on line at http://coastmentalhealth.com/Tickets.html     Peer Diabetes Program Even though the 3 year pilot funding through the Vancouver Foundation for the Coast Peer Worker Program is coming to an end, the program will be continuing.  Partly "as is" with training and placement of PSW's in programs which have dedicated funding and also with a new component this spring. As you may or may not know, folks with Mental Illness are diagnosed with Diabetes at twice that of the average population. So it seemed only natural that trained peer workers could also be given extra training to provide Diabetes support to their peers. The Peer Diabetes Program will initially be set up on a pilot project basis and the program will be looking at 4 sites to host a 6 - 7 month PSW Diabetes information and support program that will be co-facilitated by 2 trained peer workers who will not only have diabetes themselves but will also have diabetes training. The program will be asking program coordinators / managers to contact the coordinator, John Massam if they are interested in being part of the pilot. 604-762-7925 or email johnm@coastmentalhealth.com. Program Closures - Employee Displacements  The sad Odyssey of closing two important programs continues this week.  By Saturday, the last clients from the Dreamweaver and Reason's Way Concurrent Disorder Transitions Program on Riverview grounds will be moved to their next settings.  Most will receive continued support through Coast, initially through the current staff and then through the new Super Sil/ICM program that is being funded through Vancouver Coastal Health. PACT Employment Services last day is April 30th.  Clients who would otherwise use PACT will be referred to one of the several WorkBC Employment Service Centres which will be opening April 2nd at over 70 locations around the Province http://www.workbc.ca . As a result of these closures over 30 staff were displaced.   As part of this process, the first round of "bumped" employees will be receiving an email that they are being displaced and will be invited to the March 29th session..   Someone with more seniority has "bumped" the person from their current job at Coast and they will then receive information on what are their options. Human Resources has set a session at the Administrative Office at 1:00 o'clock on Thursday, March 29th to give the affected employees their official displacement notice present the options and the process for these employees.   As you can imagine, this is an unsettling and uncertain time at Coast and I know you will be understanding and patient as we work through this process.  Ethics Committee Friday The Ethics committee is meeting this Friday at 10:00 a.m. at the Coast administrative offices.  Here are the minutes of the last meeting in February.   Note that the Peer Worker program is invited to Friday's meeting Coast Mental Health  Ethics Committee Meeting Notes February 2012 Case #1 Coast Supported Housing VPD liaison has asked staff to share information about a resident that they suspect is engaging in property crime in the neighborhood. They've asked for access to our video footage and access to our keep fob monitoring system so they can track his comings and goings. They've also asked for access to a common space so they can situate a plain clothes police officer to monitor the resident. What is practice around protecting client confidentiality in our dealings with the VPD? What is the balance between sharing information with the VPD to support the safety of residents and the community while also protecting the confidentiality of clients who are the focus of VPD investigations? Values involved: confidentiality, duty to protect, benevolence / nonmaleficence, fidelity, veracity EC Response: VDP requests to permit an undercover officer to monitor activities in the building, have access to video footage and obtain specific information regarding selected tenants are intrusive and excessively interfering with tenants privacy rights. Therefore, Coast should exercise caution to avoid violation of its tenants / clients' rights. At the same time however, Coast must demonstrate willingness for a reasonable cooperation to maintain good relationship with the VPD. EC Recommendations: Be honest with clients and ask for permission to share information with VPD. Cooperate with VPD when permission from a client to release information has been obtained /  confirmed Cooperate with VPD when required by law, i.e. search permit, charges pending, etc. Meet with VPD liaison to obtain more information from VPD re policies they follow, rationale for their requests, etc. Ask other organizations in the area about their practices in cooperating with VPD. Confront others' practices and decide which ones can be reasonably adopted by Coast. Case #2 Follow up on the previous discussion regarding boundaries of relationships between staff and clients. EC recommendations: Preference is given to a case by case approach that allows for thoughtful consideration of individual situations. This approach is the most flexible yet the least obvious for interpretation. Review Coast Code of Conduct to ensure accuracy and consistency of the rules and acceptable / permissible variances to the rules. Case #3 Follow up on the previous discussion regarding potential improvements / changes: EC recommends forwarding the question how EC recommendations are incorporated into decision making at Coast to the executive committee for further consideration. It is EC's stance that committee's recommendations should be treated seriously in order to safeguard ethical standards in Coast-wide practices. EC recommends recruiting peer support / client and housing division representatives to the committee. EC established the following schedule for inviting representatives of different divisions to monthly meetings: o       March: Peer Support Program o       April: Housing o       May: Human Resource o       June: Accounting  4.  To generate ethics-related discussion, each month EC will post a question involving ethical dilemma relevant to Coast practices. Staff at all program areas are encouraged to initiate discussion on the subject and forward case studies or questions to Ethics Corner for further consideration. Question of the Month schedule: March: Is accepting gifts from our clients always forbidden? Under what circumstance a gift can be accepted?  April:  What do you do when your friend, ex-lover, or a relative becomes a client of Coast / your assigned client? Next meeting: March 30, 2012; 10 am - 1 pm (NOTE TIME CHANGE). We are inviting peer support workers to the meeting in March.