Summary of the Second Meeting

Break-out Session Wrap-ups

For more details on a particular topic, read the complete text in the summary. Break-out session reporters summarized the discussions as follows:

Knowledge Application

Knowledge transfer (or perhaps more appropriately, skills transfer) involves both a sender and receiver;
The receiver determines the value or worth of the knowledge/skills transferred;
As such, the receiver creates demand, especially if the receiver is a consumer or family advocacy group that can quickly cut through bureaucracy and effectively push for systems change;
CMHS and its TA Centers must learn how to present knowledge/skills in a way that creates demand;
If a receiver is not ready to accept or use what's offered, such knowledge/skills will go unused;
An independent ombudsman that is sensitive to both consumers' and providers' needs may be useful in brokering knowledge in the transfer process;
Knowledge must be presented in an understandable, user-friendly way that is appropriate to the audience;
Users of the knowledge must be partners in developing the product;
Frameworks that include logic models/decision trees may help some audiences use knowledge more effectively;
It is important to understand a community's needs and tailor the knowledge application to each community;
Systems change requires long-term relationships;
It is imperative to identify key decision-makers who can actually produce change; and
CMHS and its TA Centers must consider a community's financial incentives or disincentives to making systems change.

Community Action Grants

TA Centers could be instrumental in helping community action grant applicants identify best practices;
To do so effectively, TA Centers need an overall conceptual framework of what CMHS considers to be the elements of best practices;
TA Centers can also provide expertise in helping to build consensus among collaborating organizations and in evaluating how the process unfolds;
TA Centers will need a conceptual framework of consensus building from CMHS to be effective; and
All suggestions about how TA Centers may assist applicants for community action grants were offered with the understanding that resources, such as staff time and travel funds, may not be available.

Community Information Needs

Strategies to identify community information needs, especially those of consumers and family members include:
Surveying audiences and constituents;
Asking peer support groups what they need; and
Tapping into technology such as the Internet.
Strategies to meet community information needs include:
Providing more toll-free telephone resources;
Disseminating information to other agencies to enable people with multiple needs to enter the mental health system;
Presenting materials in an easy-to-read language and format;
Presenting materials in ways that meet audience information needs;
Providing outreach beyond the mental health system such as to faith communities and school systems;
Making better use of and providing more information to peer support groups; and
Creating a centralized directory of information on topics that cut across the focus areas of TA Centers.

TA Center Evaluation

Given the recent shift from evaluations that focus on process to those that focus on outcomes, TA Centers need help in identifying the methods, measures, and resources necessary to conduct evaluations;
To conduct an appropriate outcomes evaluation, a TA Center must have explicit goals, a clear idea of expected effects, well-defined assumptions and hypotheses, and an understanding of the environment.
It is unclear whether TA Centers should conduct self-evaluations or be evaluated by an external organization;
It makes more sense to evaluate the TA Centers as a whole, rather than on an individual basis;
TA Centers that already have experience in evaluation should share their materials and learnings with other TA Centers;
The CMHS TA Center Human Services Research Institute (HSRI) is well-positioned to provide evaluation assistance to the other TA Centers; and
All the TA Centers view themselves as contributors to systems change and as systems change agents.

Innovation Packages

The goal of the discussion on innovation packages was to come up with the best ways to apply this information to the State block grant planning process;
There is uncertainty about State planners' receptivity to the information in innovation packages. The uncertainty stems largely from a sense of disempowerment by many State planners and a feeling that innovation at this time may be too risky; and
CMHS and the TA Centers must find ways, such as conducting trainings and creating a framework that integrates innovation packages into a State's strategic plan, to link decision-makers with those at the programmatic level.

In closing, John Gates commended CMHS and the TA Centers for the variety and depth of expertise they provide to communities across the country. The sum of this expertise, Gates suggested, may be the creation of an unprecedented mental health culture that will benefit the entire population, not only clinical populations.

Gates recommended that CMHS create a strategic plan, clarify its messages, and market them. He also encouraged CMHS and the TA Centers to think about ways of turning near-term process measures into long-term outcomes measures. Gates urged CMHS to attend to private practices, and particularly corporate practices, that are becoming dominant throughout the country; to make inroads into professional training programs; to build on linkages with faith communities; and to foster appropriate alliances with corporations.

The second meeting was adjourned.