It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join us at our 11^th Annual Meeting held this year in Region 1’s York County at the Wells Ogunquit Center at Moody, 300 Post Road (Route 1) Wells, Maine.  You can visit their website at www.wocam.org.  Directions are enclosed.

This event is October 16, 2010 from 11:00 to 4:00 with a spaghetti and meatball dinner at 2:00 followed by awards and door prizes.  We are very excited about having the privilege to hear from an award winning national consumer leader, Sherry Jenkins-Tucker.

Sharon Jenkins Tucker is the Executive Director of the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, Inc. She was awarded the 2010 Isaiah Uliss Advocate Award by the United States Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (USPRA) and the 2009 Clifford W. Beers Award by Mental Health America. Sherry is a board member of the national Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) and USPRA-GA. She previously worked for the West Virginia Mental Health Consumers’ Association and directed their Mental Health Consumer Network and the West Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs. Prior to that, she was a Behavioral Health Advocate for Legal Aid of West Virginia for nine years. Sherry is a self identified consumer of mental health services and holds the credential of ITE (I’m the Evidence), I’m the evidence that recovery works. She has extensive experience with the consumer/survivor movement and has expertise with WRAP facilitation, Leadership Academy training, peer workforce development, advocacy and mind/body/spirit wellness. Sherry is a Certified Peer Specialist. Her degrees are from West Virginia University and she holds a Masters and Bachelors of Arts. She lives in Stone Mountain, GA with her husband Randy and their dogs Dusty and Maxwell. Ms Tucker will be talking to us about how to create peer services that work.

We will hold our membership meeting and vote on new members to our Board of Directors.  Candidates for AIN’s Board of Directors are Region 1 Donald Burns; Region 2 Nancy DeRaps, Mary Norton, and Dee Nilsen; and Region 3 Wes Mallett.  We still have seats available in Regions 1 and 3.  If you are interested in serving on AIN’s Board of Directors please submit a letter stating your interest, your skills, and your history of participation in the consumer movement.  Mail to AIN, PO Box 878, Bangor, ME 04402-0878.

We also hope to collect input from you on The Office of Adult Mental Health (OAMHS) initiative to prioritize the development of a system of recovery-oriented care and support.

Transforming mental health services to a recovery oriented system are words that many of us are using but few can easily define. Recovery language is part of many documents and philosophies. However, it is not clear how to create a mental health system that supports recovery on all levels. In this collaborative process, we will look at what recovery-oriented care looks like and how that vision affects policy, contracts, program development and evaluation. As we understand more clearly what it means to have a system of recovery-oriented care, we will develop processes to evaluate how services support recovery. Part of this recovery initiative is an outcomes project that utilizes a toolkit, which includes the Outcomes Questionnaire (OQ) Measures and the RAS (Recovery Assessment Scale), to measure individual change and for program evaluation to assess aspects of recovery. Using gathered data and subsequent understanding and knowledge, we will work towards continuously improving our mental health system of care. Recovery-oriented care is a major focus for OAMHS. We invite everyone to work with us as we together help Maine move forward in implementation of a system of recovery-oriented care.

• Recovery-oriented care is consumer and family driven
• Recovery-oriented care is timely and responsive
• Recovery-oriented care is person-centered
• Recovery-oriented care is effective, equitable, and efficient
• Recovery-oriented care is safe and trustworthy
• Recovery-oriented care maximizes use of natural supports and settings

You can read about each phase on the website http://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mh/recovery/defining.shtml.

Please call AIN 1-888-375-5969 to register for the meeting and dinner.

Driving Directions:

Wells Ogunquit Center is located on Route 1 in Wells.