Hi

The time has come to explain what is going on with the union recognition negotiations in Santa Clara County.

I have approached things with an agenda to do consulting for Santa Clara County M.H. in ‘accountability training’ and client networking infrastructure issues in general.

Last fall (then Acting M.H. Director) Nancy Pena proposed to me, in light of this perspective, which corresponds to a felt need for real dialogue, that I organize an ‘educational retreat’ for the senior managers at County M.H., in the area of ‘union recognition’/independent client organizing. This has been an ongoing discussion and work process: The subtext is that I’ve also been developing my client computer class and she has been consolidating her working hold on County M.H. (becoming Director and reorganizing things to suit).

When Allan Rawland first approached me about taking a consulting role, I proposed to him that we rely on the ‘expertise’ of veteran clients around the state, who have adopted the philosophy of ‘accountability’, in our training work. Now that’s the Accountability Caucus and Nancy, not quite thinking in these terms, asked that the training rely on out-of-county clients, mentioning specifically Alison Mills, Maria Maceira, and Bonnie Schell, whom she’d met and come to respect. ..

The upshot is that last Thursday myself, Alison Mills, Stephen Blum of CSPP, and Nancy met to discuss how we would implement this training (Jose Rangel was invited but did not attend). We discussed the ‘working scenario’ which was a Saturday retreat with (about 10) top managers and about the same number of A.C. people and associates. In the interests of full disclosure let me say I’ve approached the three Nancy mentioned, plus Stephen Blum, Coni Kalinowski, Debi Davis, Syl Plowright, and locally Terry Fleming, Almalicia Castillo, and Jose Rangel. The retreat was to be followed up by a second retreat which I called, Meet the U.C.M., where the civil relations between the local veterans and the top managers would be reconstructed in the interests of authentic dialogue.

Of course life moves faster than abstract plans, so Nancy came back on this that she’s now constructed a kind of ‘kitchen cabinet’, a Stakeholders Committee that is meant to play a central advisory role in policy. Plus she is dealing with the complexity that three top jobs are currently vacant — Deputy Director, Medical Director, and Adult Systems Manager. She wants the ‘educational retreat’ to be reconstructed so that in addition to the top managers, the ‘stakeholders’ group be included. This is OK, it’s in its own topsy turvy way things moving forward, but some discussion of the business involved is in order.

Well, that’s how things stand: Tom Jurgensen and Barry Fultonberg are among the ‘stakeholders’ group, though as Barry poignantly points out, he’s not very clear how it is that he’s authentically supposed to be “the representative of the client stakehold.” [!] I must say it’s nice to work in a County where there’s a core of people like this who are trying to do the right thing in the face of all the problematic and confusing matters that we must deal with.  :-)

I guess that the agenda of profound rearrangement of the dialogue in the direction of ‘trauma of treatment’ and recognition of the institution of independent client organizing is going to be implemented. I think that the A.C. is going to be the pivotal factor, with the assistance of some other friendly parties, in achieving this. I think we will create the foundation for an institution of the genre of ‘accountability training’, which locally will be our donation to the Mental Health Clients of Santa Clara County. And I think we are facing a host of unknown (but engaging) consequences which will keep our collective imaginations quite busy for some time to come.

Done with love.

Best regards

Andrew