For the next few days I'm going to shed some light on my experiences during my four year tenure in the community mental health industry in the Commonwealth of Virginia. For those who don't know what community mental health industry entails, it is a myriad of services that address the mental health and behavioral issues and needs for any given community, region, etc. My expertise in this field comes from providing intensive in-home (IIH) and therapeutic day treatment (TDT) to children; and mental health support (MHS) for adults. With the exception of TDT, IIH and MHS are services where a counselor provides the interventions in the home of the service recipient. TDT is done in a school or an after school program. The components I will look at are the partnerships, the players (agencies, organizations, etc.), the people (kids, adults, families), and the power (Medicaid, Dept. Behavioral Health). The names of everyone will be hidden to protect the successful and/or the sorry. Let's begin...
I just left a meeting held by an agency that has developed an administration training method geared to increase production and morale for other companies. Three companies were represented at the meeting, and I must say these last two days of the week long training have been exceptional. Not so much because of the information (I should've had this training four years ago, but I'll leave that right there) but because a company actually is moving to help other companies. You would think this type of partnership would be a common theme since we are helping people, but this is acutally fairly innovative.
Unless you include a certain five-letter company that is being contracted by Medicaid to eliminate other companies (seriously), there rarely is any type of collaboration going on in this industry. For instance, there is another four-letter agency that touts themselves on reducing gang activity and essentially violence in South Richmond. So, with great grant writing [I assume], they've gamed the Feds out of millions of dollars to back this successful program. Then they've gathered "partnerships" with other agencies that actually do the work, but on individual basis'. The four-letter proclaims that they, or we, are a strong unit geared to community improvement. In reality, much of the gang activity never even existed. But if you count two dudes from one hood robbing someone from another hood, we can call that gang activity. Also, the days of the dope dealer shoot out in Richmond is about over. Most hustlers have taken on more of a business sense, so it makes better business to make clean deals. Lastly, in more importantly, this four-letter agency does NO work. Case and point, they have a "One Stop Job Center" that opened in February that has yet to be staffed with employees. On the contrary, the police, the community agencies, and the non-profits do the work.
The word "partner" sounds good, which is why this four-letter and another three-letter used to oversee the community agencies in the schools use the term. But there is no partnership. No company gives clients to another. Instead, they sit on them until the can find someone in their own company to help. This process can take months. Meanwhile, the client moves closer to being sent to jail. My company has given birth to two other agencies (including funding them to get them started). You think they threw us any business? Of course not, because helping kids in this field is like selling crack--this is my block now. "Partners" are used to sit around each other in meetings, introduce their services to one another, and eat pastries. But when it comes to planning together and working together, it ain't happening. Even the people we pay rent to, whose entire organization created the hood, doesn't give us the consistent insight to help their community. But when it's [insert your favorite projects here] community day time they have their hands out for sponsorship.
Don't get it confused, community mental health is a business. And we all know how most successful business make it, with the art of back scratching. Or in other words, if you want business, how much will you pay us? That three-letter school agency I was talking about has people on staff that takes bribes like judges. You pay the site leader, you get clients. Professionalism and the ability to help doesn't matter; even if it's to counsel the kids who will steal your car one day if they don't get help now; the key is how much are you paying. And that's how partnership is done in this field, just like the dope game.
So can we coexist? Can we stop chasing the dollar to collectively address the issues that allows our generations to get worse and worse? Can we really be partners? Maybe, but probably not. After all, in VA most of these businesses are black-owned. And you know how we usually work together, we don't. Shout out Spike Lee and Tyler Perry.
Peace.
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