Creating the Future: Change, Challenge, Opportunity

The National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse announces that Alternatives 2014, the 28th national mental health conference organized by and for mental health consumers/ survivors, will be held in Orlando, Florida, at the Caribe Royale, October 22-26, 2014.

Click Here for the Registration Brochure
Click Here to Register Online

• Technical Assistance Request Form
• Request technical assistance from STAR Center
• Call STAR Center at (866) 537-STAR (7827)

STAR Center Community of Practice on Collaborative Leadership:
Featuring an Interview with Leah Harris

Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Time: 1 - 2:30 p.m. ET

This month's Community of Practice features a new webinar based interview format with Leah Harris, M.A., Director of the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery. Leah is a mother, storyteller, and activist. She has been a nationally-recognized leader in the mental health consumer/survivor movement for over a decade. Leah is the daughter of two parents who were diagnosed with mental illness, both of whom died young as a result of their disabilities. This depth of her personal experience fuels Leah's commitment to ensuring human rights and recovery for all people who experience emotional distress and crisis.

Join the STAR Center Community of Practice on Collaborative Leadership and Action for a featured interview with Leah Harris to hear more about Leah's view of her own leadership style, her personal standards for leadership and how we can best support and develop leadership with each other.

Hitting the Streets: Engaging People When and Where It's Needed the Most

Learning objectives:

• Identify principles of effective outreach;
• Describe effective outreach strategies;
• List effective best practices for outreach;
• Promote safety strategies for outreach work; and
• Discuss steps in building trust.

Cultural Activation Prompts (CAPs): A New Consumer Tool to Encourage Consumers to Let Providers Know About What Culturally Matters To Them

Learning objectives:

• To understand the importance to providers of learning about a consumer's cultural identity and value system
• To learn of a new notion of cultural activation intended to promote consumer's participation in the therapeutic process
• To become familiar with a newly developed tool, CAPs, for use by consumers to present salient features of their culture that might influence care planning.

Courageous Conversations: Being Allies to Individuals in Recovery Who Experience Prejudice, Discrimination and Oppression

Learning objectives:

• Understand the unique aspects of courageous conversations
• Deepen the awareness of how prejudice, discrimination and oppression operate at the intrapersonal, social, and systemic contexts
• Learn how to be an ally through the development of cultural empathy

• Video: What Would You Do? "Islamophobia" ABC News
• Key Concepts
• Labeling and stigma - Link & Phelan 2013
• Microaggressions
• RacialMicroaggressions
• White Privilege