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Our Position on
the Role of the Council After the Merger The Queen Street Patients Council is anticipating the formation of a new public mental health and addictions treatment centre with an open mind. Relative to the status quo, we may even hope for some new beginnings. Negotiations have not begun yet between the users of the future centre and its Steering Committee (though we've made our positions clear on an accountable governance structure. It should invite consumers and survivors, elected in a free and self-determined process, to participate in governing). We will be monitoring changes during and after the merger, and responding to them as our constituency must respond to them in their living spaces. When the governing board wishes to address our concerns, such as governance, it is invited to do so in letters to our office. The Council looks forward to discussing our goals with the new governing board, and we will continue to negotiate many of those goals with internal management at Queen Street Mental Health Centre, whatever its name or structure after the merger. We are as always committed to the people served by Queen Street, survivors and consumers of mental health who live in the Queen Street catchment area, who may be served by other institutions in that area as well. Our incorporated organization will not change its goals or structure as a result of the merger. Our ever-growing and -changing constituency remains concerned with the same problems and issues it has faced well before amalgamation, well before Queen Street's earliest general shifts in policy, management and practice. We are committed to providing a voice for these concerns. We thank the Queen Street management for its actions on our requests and our issues in the past. Our board continues to invite the Steering Committee and future governing board to respond to consumer and survivor issues. We hope they will find success in developing trust with clients in the upcoming years. 1. Representation Consumers and Survivors are underrepresented on all decision making bodies of the new corporation and the institutions it oversees. It was our position that the new Board should be at least 50% c/s's. If that was not the case, Ministry of Health policies support at least a third of the Board being c's's. We got, of course, nothing like this representation. We have made two other requests for positions regarding governance:
2. Accountability All consumer and survivor representatives must be chosen by consumers and survivors. The conflict of interest that arises when c/s reresentatives are chosen by staff is not acceptable . Consumers appointed to committees by staff have been known to say that they dare not disagree with staff on committees for fear that they will lose their "job" (meaning the committee work and the honorarium that comes with it). C/s's should be clear that they are representing c/s's. 3. Peer Advocacy Attempting to be a voice for the thousands of c/s's who use these institutions is no small feat, and the organizations that work to do so such as the Patients Council require funding and commitment to act upon the issues we raise. (These organizations must be accountable for their policies to their c/s membership not to the corporation.) A statement regarding the corporation's support of peer advovacy should be part of a "Culture of Collaboration". A statement supporting patients' rights should also be included in the corporation's Vision Statements. 4. Self Identified Needs We hope that the "consumer needs" that are referred to in the draft policies are people's self identified needs, with all that entails. Home
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