I encourage members of ACES in the Criminal Justice System to share what you each hope you gain or contribute by participating in this networking group. Mission Statements please!
I work in CDCR, and hope to see routine ACEs screening of inmates and parolees with that data preserved and used for policy planning on the macro level and treatment planning on a local level. There are free treatment materials available that we could easily start using now. The barrier is that we do not have a clinical caseload standard, so patient/clinician ratios are based on budget considerations rather than based on client and public safety. Without a clinical caseload standard, some clinicians have caseloads of over a hundred. You cannot provide weekly trauma therapy for each client for one hour and also provide weekly group treatment for two hours, which is standard protocol for trauma treatment. Twice a week ind/ group. That's 3 hours per client per week. That doesn't include case notes, collateral contacts, case management, staff meetings, going to the bathroom. Put that into a 40 hour week, you do the math. Frankly I'd be grateful to have one hour per week for each client which is a caseload of 40. Wow, imagine if clients could be treated with the care and consideration any human being would expect and be seen more frequently than once a month for 15 minutes. Instead of providing drive thru McTherapy. I think HMOs, county agencies, and many nonprofit counseling agencies practice mental health treatment this way. It is not isolated to CDCR. It is standard practice because of the managed care model. The model is based on the premise of scarcity of mental health resources. However we know this is an urban myth. There is no scarcity. There are plenty of providers and there is plenty of money and savings to be had by treating ACES. We need to challenge these assumptions and premises because they are hurting people and wasting money.