MHTP & WIMHRT Mini-Grant Program
Mini-Grant Program
In December 2007, the Mental Health Transformation Grant in partnership with the WIMHRT announced an extension to the Mini-Grant Program for mental health consumers and family members.
For state and community organizations, the Consumer and Family Evaluation Mini-Grant Program Toolkit serves as a guide for developing and implementing their own Mini-Grant Program.
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CONSUMER & FAMILY EVALUATION MINI-GRANT PROGRAM GRANTEES
March – September 2009
Name of Grantee: Chelan-Douglas Quality Review Team (QRT)
Project Director: Valerie Fugelseth
Project Title: Project HOPE (Helping Others Promote Empowerment)
Area of Washington: Chelan and Douglas Counties
Budget: $5,000
The Chelan-Douglas QRT, in collaboration with their local Ombudsman, plans to expand the scope of their current work within their region to achieve the following: (1) evaluate the effectiveness of consumer-driven services in achieving recovery and resiliency in this rural area of Washington State, and (2) assess the extent to which such services should be expanded to better serve Latinos in this service area. To achieve #1, this evaluation team plans to develop and administer a survey of participants in consumer-run services at each provider agency. To achieve #2, they plan to conduct focus groups of Spanish-speaking consumers.
Name of Grantee: Consumer Voices Are Born, Inc. (CVAB)
Project Director: Brad Berry
Project Title: Evaluating CVAB’s Effectiveness
Area of Washington: Clark County
Budget: $11,500
CVAB is an adult consumer-run organization in Vancouver, WA and operates a mental health Self-Help Recovery Center and Warm Line. The primary aims of this project are to assist CVAB in establishing an improved data infrastructure that will be able to meet the needs of this growing agency, provide more definitive answers regarding their effectiveness as a resource for wellness and recovery, and establish hard evidence of the positive impact consumer-run organizations can have for many people who face challenges to their mental health. To achieve these aims, CVAB plans to conduct interviews and surveys to gather outcome data that will become a more routine data collection effort to promote ongoing self-evaluation within their agency.
Name of Grantee: John Corr & Elizabeth Gordon
Project Director: John Corr
Project Title: South King County Mental Illness and Spirituality Evaluation
Area of Washington: South King County
Budget: $6,900
The goal of the project is to assess the spirituality needs of consumers at one community mental health provider which serves three South King County communities as well as to assess the perception of staff to meet those needs through available organization and community resources. Focus groups will be held for consumer participants at all three community treatment locations. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a limited number of consumers to ensure that input from participants from diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds are included in this evaluation. Short, structured interviews will be conducted with staff participants at all three locations. For comparison purposes, semi-structured interviews will be undertaken with program coordinators along with participant observation at three programs offering some form of ‘soulcare’ specifically for people diagnosed with mental illness. Lastly, a half-day conference will be held to present information on the different ways in which soulcare may be integrated into treatment. The attendees will be given a self-evaluation questionnaire on their own perception of explicitly making available soulcare resources or referrals to such resources in a treatment setting.
Name of Grantee: NAMI Washington
Project Director: Barbara Bate
Project Title: Assessing the Power of Peers: Building Data Infrastructure to Evaluate NAMI Peer Programs in Washington State.
Area of Washington: Statewide
Budget: $6,511
At least ten NAMI Washington affiliates have offered one or more peer-consumer-run programs in Washington State within the past five years. While attendees of these programs describe them as valuable, NAMI Washington would like to go beyond such anecdotal evidence. In particular, they plan to evaluate the outcomes within these peer programs and whether they can demonstrate that they bring hope and build leaders among hundreds, and potentially, thousands, of Washington State citizens. To do so, they plan to develop the infrastructure capacity to collect continuing program evaluation data to evaluate these programs. These approaches will include (1) first, assessing who has participated in or led one or more of the NAMI peer programs in the state, and (2) based on their findings regarding the number of participants and their locations, further assessing participants’ experiences and specific outcomes of these programs.
