In This Issue: Welcome from Paula Goering - Multisite Comparison - Featured Tool: Empowerment Scale - Consumer/Survivor Initiatives

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Welcome from Paula Goering

Hello and welcome to this first edition of our newsletter. The Community Mental Health Evaluation Initiative (CMHEI) wants to keep the field informed about what we are doing and what we are learning as the five-year project proceeds. This is one of the forms of communication we will be using to let you know what we are about.

Our project is unique in many ways. It is the first multisite evaluation of community mental health programs in Canada. It was planned and is being conducted with the involvement of a wide range of players, including government, community providers, family and consumers. It is designed to provide information relevant to policy. The funding was provided by the Ministry of Health to the Mental Health Policy Group, which is a coalition of three agencies: Ontario Mental Health Foundation (OMHF), Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario Division (CMHA) and Health Systems Research Unit (HSRU). The project was designed to evaluate the types of services and supports that were funded by the Community Reinvestment Fund, i.e., case management, self-help, crisis.

It includes a coordination centre, located in the HSRU, to oversee the development of the project and to conduct a multisite study. Using a common protocol across projects allows us to address questions that pool data from the separate studies.

A request for proposals was developed through a wide consultation process, which included a one-day planning workshop with 30 participants and Dee Roth, a consultant from Ohio. It was circulated throughout the province and proposals were submitted to the OMHF for external and internal peer review. We were pleased with the number and variety of proposals that were received. It was exciting to pioneer at OMHF a grant review process that included non-researchers as active participants in the decision making and the opportunity for selected teams to respond to reviewers' concerns as a part of the funding process.

Getting the projects up and running has taken considerable skill and work on the part of all concerned, but we now are in a position to tell you about what has been accomplished in the first year and whet your appetite about the results that will soon be available from the baseline measurement. We are hoping that reading this newsletter will be informative and encourage you to contact any of the various project teams that are relevant to your own interests.

Initiative Description

The CMHEI is comprised of seven projects funded to evaluate community mental health programs. These projects have come together to create a common set of measures so that the data can be compared from one program type to the next.

For a list of the individual projects and the principal investigator(s) which make up the multisite study, see the Projects page and follow the links for descriptions, proposals and contact information.

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