TODAY, our Alliance for Rights and Recovery (formerly NYAPRS) invites you to a very informative and empowering New York City Regional Forum from 11:00am-2:00pm at Baltic Street Isaac Brown’s Healing and Arts Community Center (882 3rd Avenue, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11232).
The forum will especially focus on 3 items of huge importance to our members, colleagues and allies across the state:
- Alliance Vice President for Public Policy Luke Sikinyi will be discussing Governor Hochul’s recently released state budget’s expansion of involuntary inpatient and outpatient commitment programs and her proposals to invest $16.5 million in voluntary service alternatives to disconnected individuals, increase investments in a number of Peer Bridger, INSET and upstate Clubhouse programs and increase rates for community mental health agencies and housing programs. He will also explain why the Alliance is backing the use of Incident Review Panels to investigate episodes of violence and to provide corrective remedies going forward.
- The forum will also include presentations from representatives of major advocacy campaigns, including Daniel’s Law, which aims to send out teams of highly trained peers and emergency technicians to mental health crisis calls to safely engage and support people experiencing a crisis, and Treatment not Jail (A.4869, S.4547, which would provide at risk individuals with mental health treatment alternatives to the inhumane and permanently traumatizing experience of jails.
- Finally, attendees will hear a presentation from New York City’s current and only INSET peer-to-peer engagement program, which has been shown to enroll over 83% of people who were previously disconnected or failed by more traditional methods of engagement and treatment and who, as a result, might otherwise have been required to receive involuntarily delivered services.
We’ll be serving a light lunch at 2:00 pm.
This forum will help shape our collective advocacy efforts leading up to our March 4th Annual Legislative Day in Albany during which we’ll hear presentations from OMH Commissioner Ann Sullivan and key legislative leaders.
During that day, we will also hold a large Capital rally calling for significant investments in community-based mental health agencies and their workforce as well as a very timely press conference to voice opposition to the expansion of involuntary treatment.
As an added bonus, all attendees will be entered into a raffle for a full scholarship to The Alliance’s annual conference!
