Ok, VOCAL! Another opportunity to speak up! Virginia is reviewing the regulations meant to protect the rights of peers receiving services from the state and state-licensed or funded agencies. The long, full name of these are the “Regulations to Assu...
Continue ReadingA chance to weigh in on the direction of Virginia’s mental health system. Comments due by February 29th. This request for feedback comes from the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS): Since, October 2014, the Transforma...
Continue Reading
By Lydia Wilson, VOCAL Staff (lydia /at/ vocalvirginia.org) Heads up: This note might be triggering for some, not sure. Let me encourage you it ends with hope! We all find many ways to process overwhelming emotions. Screaming at the trees? Entire pint of ...
Continue Reading
With so much heartbreaking violence in the news, mental health policy is getting more attention. It’s a shame it takes a crisis — especially a crisis that might not be linked to mental health care at all. Understandably, many of VOCAL’s memb...
Continue Reading
What a privilege to join VOCAL members and partners in policy, practice and advocacy last week for the 2016 Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care Conference sponsored and hosted by the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services’ new-ish ...
Continue Reading
This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how change gets made. Journalists joke about the process of reporting as “How the sausage gets made” – a visual, smelly reminder that creating something can be messy. That final newspaper...
Continue Reading
Virginia’s Department of Medical Assistance has released a draft of regulations for Medicaid-billable peer support for mental health and/or substance use disorders. The distribution was dated Friday, February 10th at noon (see below) and there was...
Continue ReadingVOCAL is monitoring barrier crime legislation introduced this session very closely. There were two separate bills to provide exclusions for barrier crimes in relation to the behavioral health field introduced this year – HB479 and SB555. HB479 was a ver...
Continue ReadingSB555 passed out of the House of Delegates’ Health, Welfare, and Institutions (HWI) Subcommittee #2 this morning, 2/20/18, with a result of 7 yea to 3 nay; however, there are three more steps for this bill to be signed into law: Thursday morning at 9:30...
Continue ReadingSB555 passed out of the House of Delegates’ Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee this morning with a resulting vote of 16 to 6. What happens next? After a bill passes out of committee, it either gets sent to the Finance/Appropriations Committee t...
Continue Reading