Minutes July 09, 03

Community Living Coalition - Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, July 9, 2003 from 1:00 to 3:30 pm
Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion
2702 Norland Avenue in Burnaby

1. Introductions: Introductions were made around the room

2. Update on Seniors Forum: Bob Kiell gave an update on the 2nd Seniors Forum on July 4, 2003 in New Westminster. David Driscoll gave a response to many of the recommendations that were presented to the Interim Authority Board.

	He said that the legislation that will create Community Living British Columbia will also establish for the first time the legislative structure and guidelines for Community Living Services.
	Direct Funding vs. Individualized Funding - what's the difference? It was explained that they are basically the same thing, but Direct Funding has been used by MCFD as descriptor for the program that gives families some limited funds to buy their own services.
	A family gave an example of their son who lives in a group home. Three other residents are planning to move out - to family care - and this leaves their son without the choice of staying in the home that he prefers. Doug Walls took contact information and promised to follow up.
	Revised Service Plan: The overall cut for MCFD was revised from 23% to 11% over three years. There was much confusion over the numbers offered by the Minister - whether they applied to this year, next year or a combination of the two years. Laney and Cathy Grant agreed to bring a clearer assessment of the impact of the revised service plan once the Interim Authority had reviewed the detailed budget figures for this year and next.
	Victoria Foundation received a $20 Million transfer from MCFD and is disbursing that money to agencies who are restructuring their services. As well, there is a project between the Co Management group and the Ministry Community Living Regional offices to respond to health and safety crises in a timely way.
	Reference Groups - Senior Families should apply to be on the reference groups in their area to ensure that the voices of senior families are heard.

3. Update on Transitions workshop: Maria stated that a summary of the discussions of the transitions forum is on the website and your feedback is requested.

4. Interim Authority for Community Living BC Update:

Information Sessions: Laney discussed the reasons for postponing the Community Information Sessions - primarily for two reasons:

	summer sessions have attendance challenges due to many people being away on vacation
	some critical information / decisions are still not available for public presentation and the presentations will be better if they can include that information.

The board hopes to reschedule the sessions for the early fall.

Reference Groups: Nominations have been received from around the Province. There will probably be an extension of the deadline for applications as some areas of the Province received information later than others, and many people are still interested in applying.

Childrens' Issues: The Minister appointed Jane Morley, the Children's Officer, to gather a group of people to review the Joint Policy Directorate and the division of services between Community Living, Children's Services and Aboriginal Services. The meeting went well, with all present agreeing that the agreement of April 18, 2002 can work well for families. The report of Jane Morley will be reviewed by the Minister and should resolve this issue.

Governance Issues: Cabinet members are concerned about the concept of a board composed of a majority of family members and self advocates. The Minister will continue to push forward on this issue.

Safeguards During Restructuring: The restructuring process is intended to be a collaborative process based on providing individuals with the same or better services and that individuals and families should be consulted in and have a choice in any change in their services. If anyone is concerned about a restructuring plan and how it is affecting an individual, they should contact Jane Holland - the Service Quality Advocate.

Budget Update: The revised budgets outlined by the Minister in the announcement of June 25, 03 were reviewed by the Executive of the Interim Authority. The global budget numbers have been confirmed, but the detailed budget breakdowns won't be confirmed until next week. In Community Living, the previous budget cut was 17% over three years. The new figures seem to reduce that number to about 8%. This afternoon the Ministry will be publishing some more detail on the budget over the next few years, but we were cautioned that the numbers will be confusing to compare with previous year's announcements due to the way that some budgets may have been combined or re-distributed. Laney and Doug committed to getting an accurate and easy to understand picture of the revised budget out to coalition members.

MCFD Community Living Managers: Interim Authority and MCFD Community Living Managers met for three and a half hours to improve communication and collaboration on projects around the province.

5. Mental Health Update: Nancy Hall, Consultant to the Interim Authority - looking at issues for people with developmental disabilities who have concurrent mental health issues. Nancy has a family member who has serious mental health issues. She was also the Mental Health Advocate for the Province for three years. There were two issues that she faced the day she started: 1) Willow Clinic will be closed, and 2) Mental Health Teams and their funding were being debated. There is a steering committee - The Tertiary Capacity Steering Committee - that she is working with to develop solutions to meeting the needs of people who have dual diagnosis or severe challenging behaviours. They have recently finalized their Terms of Reference and these will be posted on the Interim Authority website.

Nancy has been opening lines of communication between the many parties involved in serving people and beginning the discussion of how to improve services. When Michael Kendrick was in town mid-June, she hosted an afternoon discussion with representatives of all the Mental Health Teams, together with service providers, families and representatives of the Interim Authority.

Nancy has been reviewing the admissions to Willow over the past year and seeing what happened for them before and through their stay at Willow, and what could have been done better.

Willow Clinic: The building is scheduled for demolition in August 2005. Ken Pook has been contracted with to plan community placements for people who have been at Willow waiting for placement. Nancy said that every individual at Willow will receive an individualized planning process that identifies an appropriate community placement.

The Tertiary Capacity Steering Committee is looking at a way to bring together the many programs that may contact an individual with challenging behaviours - IACR (Intensive Adult Care Resources), Professional Support Teams, Mental Health Teams, Forensic Psychiatric Institute, Riverview, so that people can stop going through a revolving door system and get a team collaborative approach.

A family asked why St. Vincent's Hospital's special unit is no longer available as that was very valuable for his daughter. Nancy suggested that to provide better support to people around the province, maybe a network of regional specialized units at hospitals could be created to assist those people who need short-term placement for medication reviews.

Another family asked whether there will be greater support for family centred solutions to supporting individuals? Nancy commented on the need for the system to improve its ability to incorporate family expertise in its treatment plans.

Mental Health Act Issues: The Mental Health Act allows Doctors and Police to force treatment on individuals who are deemed to be in crisis. Nancy is looking at the interaction between the Mental Health Act and Health Care Consent Act and Representation Agreements to see if there can be a better, more respectful way to respond to people in crisis.

6. Communications Committee: Perhaps we could start the next meeting with a discussion of how the coalition can improve its outreach across the Province.

7. General updates:

	Klaus talked about the restructuring plans of Vernon and District Association. They renovated some group homes and were able to use the program savings to develop new day activities, in particular for young people finishing school and needing to start adult activities. The new program is called Advanced Centre for Training - ACT. Information from the brochure is available from Vernon and District Association.
	BCACL has a project underway around families who have had difficulty accessing healthcare because their child has disabilities - call 604-875-1119 if you know families in this situation.
	Bob Kiell says he was called by a lawyer at the Attorney General's office to discuss his experience with Woodlands and whether he found Dulcie McCallum's report credible.
	Steps Forward - a society creating a program for inclusive education at UBC, is having their AGM on July 15, 2003 - Kerrisdale Community Centre.

Item for next Meeting's agenda - Update on Representation Agreements

8. Next meeting dates: August 20th, 2003 - 10am to 2pm.

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The Alliance is an open and inclusive gathering of people and organizations dedicated to empowering individuals and families to make decisions about how they lead their lives in the community.	Alliance for Community Living Contact the Alliance Last updated: 07/25/08