President’s Corner: A Message from Gordon Bopp

Once again, we had a great turnout and a very successful NAMI Day in Olympia on the January 21. Those in attendance at the morning event at the United Churches were treated to a special appearance by Senator Cheryl Pflug and Representative Mary Lou Dickerson.

Sen. Pflug was the prime sponsor of last years decriminalization bill SSB 5533 and all of us associated with NAMI realize the significance of this legislation as a first step in ending the incarceration of individuals whose behaviors are the result of a mental illness and for whom treatment is the proper way to recovery – not incarceration! Sen. Pflug noted in her remarks that the challenge now is for the Legislature to put in place the necessary steps to implementing the jail diversion components of her legislation.

Representative Dickerson is known among all of us in NAMI, and indeed, throughout the State, as the Champion for Children’s Mental Health. We are most grateful to her for sponsoring last year’s Children’s Mental Health Bill – HB 1088 and in her continuing leadership and commitment to assuring appropriate early intervention and treatment for children who are experiencing mental health problems. We look forward to continuing to work with Rep. Dickerson towards the achievement of a strong mental health system for our children.

Both Senator Pflug and Representative Dickerson received NAMI-WA’s Distinguished Service Award this year in recognition of their leadership and accomplishments in helping to transform the State’s mental health services system. Both exemplify the high standards that NAMI-WA has established for these awards.

I want to take this opportunity to thank our hosts from NAMI Thurston/Mason for the wonderful job that they did in making all of the arrangements for our NAMI-Day celebration. The event was well organized, the food and refreshments were exemplary and the day went without a hitch! What more can be said except Bravo, and thank you Thurston/Mason!!

As in the past, our Public Policy Committee took the lead in developing our legislative agenda and I want to extend my special thanks to Jim Bloss, Chair of the PPC, Seth Dawson, our lobbyist, and all of the members of the PPC for their diligence and commitment in furthering our efforts with the Legislature. The feedback from legislators was uniformly positive and we thank all of you who turned out and did such a good job in delivering NAMI’s message to our lawmakers.

Our Legislative agenda for this year included the following top priorities:

• Decriminalization of mental illness
• Support children’s mental health services
• Increase funding for the Housing Trust Fund. ($50 million increase recommended by Governor Gregoire)
• Increase the State’s share of mental health funding
• Support funding of the DMIO Program

There were seven additional priorities on our legislative agenda that are largely carryovers from the past year or two. In arriving at our priorities, we made special efforts to get feedback from all of our affiliates. Please continue your efforts at the local level to hold our lawmakers accountable for improving the mental health system in Washington. NAMI-WA’s legislative agenda is available either through your local affiliate or on the web site at namiwa.org.

Board News
The NAMI-WA Board of Directors met in Olympia on January 20 in the second of our Open Meetings with affiliate leaders from around the State. Among the items discussed were:

• Legislative agenda
• Board membership
• NAMI Walk 2008
• Community Transformation Partnership
• Implementation of SSB 5533 (decriminalization bill)
• Financial issues (board committed to address this ongoing problem at our February meeting)

Training Plans
I’m pleased to announce that NAMI-WA is making a commitment to schedule two Family-to-Family and two Visions-for-Tomorrow ‘Train the Trainers’ programs in 2008. We are seeking support from the State Transformation Grant Administration for these efforts since our budget doesn’t allow NAMI-WA to cover the complete costs for these trainings. However, in view of the interest expressed by many of you, we want to try to get these underway without waiting until it’s too difficult to schedule.

We do reserve the option to cancel or postpone the trainings if funding is inadequate. Our thoughts are that each affiliate that will be sending participants to the trainings would agree to set aside a certain amount of money to help defray the costs of the training. (If the grant comes through, then this would not be necessary). The amount that the affiliates would pledge will have to be determined by the Program Managers for F to F and V for T: Judie Ebbert-Rich and Marti Wall, respectively, as they work out the budget. We will be communicating with you about further details on these trainings in the next couple of weeks.

Board Personnel
We’ve had two resignations from the Board recently. Larry Richardson and John Winesdorfer both have had to relinquish their positions for health reasons. Both have contributed a great deal to the Board and to NAMI-WA and we will surely miss them. We are looking for nominees to replace Larry and John. We did fill the one open position that we had prior to the resignations of Larry and John. Jessica Bell was approved for appointment to the Board at last Sunday’s meeting.

We welcome her and her youthful exuberance! Jessica is currently working as a Human Resources Assistant at Kittitas Valley Community Hospital. She has already garnered a strong record of volunteer service and has been a presenter of NAMI’s Parents & Teachers As Allies Program. We look forward to working with Jessica.

NAMI Connection
NAMI National has announced the rollout of its newest signature program called NAMI Connection. This program is a peer-based, mutual support group model recovery program and fills a major gap in the Peer-to-Peer Program that has been offered for many years as one of the top educational offerings by NAMI.

The Connection Program started in 2007 with 15 states being tabbed to kick off the program. The plan is to complete the rollout over a three year period and Washington was selected as one of 15 year two rollout states. National will put on two facilitator trainings with 30 participants at each of the trainings.

This will give the rollout states a total of 60 facilitators and we will be looking for three host locations in the near future. As we understand it, the peer support group meets twice weekly and uses the peer facilitators to guide the sessions. National’s vision is that by the year 2010 every person in this country who lives with a mental illness will have, within reasonable driving distance, a NAMI Connection Recovery Support Group to attend.

Early reports have been very positive so let’s hope that we can get our state up and running this year.