Transitions-Mental Health Association was awarded a $150,000 grant from the California Wellness Foundation to launch TMHA CORPS, a new 3-year pilot program.
TMHA CORPS (Career Opportunities in Recovery and Preventive Services) combines multiple elements of existing TMHA services to create a pipeline that will outreach to and recruit consumers and family members, provide them with training and field experience, and ultimately match them with professional opportunities in the Public Mental Health System.
In each of the three upcoming years TMHA will hold a six-month “semester” for 10-15 participants which will include career counseling, multiple mental health trainings, field internships within different TMHA programs, and job coaching and development designed to lead to professional placements both within TMHA and at other nonprofits and agencies along the Central Coast.
“The integration of individuals with lived experience provides an organic level of Cultural Competence to mental health services,” said Barry Johnson, TMHA’s Division Director of Rehabilitation and Advocacy Services. “People who have experienced mental illness possess an instinctive understanding of the concept of wellness, recovery, and resilience, and have the unique standing to make referrals that a client in crisis might not be willing to initially accept from someone who cannot relate to their experience.”
TMHA CORPS will outreach to and recruit mental health consumers and family members through many current TMHA programs, including three Wellness Centers in San Luis Obispo County and two Recovery Learning Communities in North Santa Barbara County. The program will have an additional emphasis on recruiting participants from Latino/Hispanic communities throughout the Central Coast.
“No agency in this region hires more consumers and family members,” said Deanna Strachan, Program Manager for TMHA’s Supported Employment Program and the upcoming TMHA CORPS. “The current direction of California’s Mental Health Systems Act (MHSA) is to provide more job opportunities for men and women with lived experience. We are very excited to support that trend on a local level.”