Tangling With a DMHAS Staff Member Part 3: The Plan
The caseworker from DMHAS assured me that he had a plan to get our son and I back to CT within the next few weeks. I listened to his plan, but was hesitant from the start. Here it is:
- The caseworker was going to get a “respite” bed at the behavioral center where our son is still a client. This means that our son would be placed in a fairly confined and restrictive environment that only allows him to be there for no more than 10 days. Respite is a place for people to go who might have just come out of the hospital, but they need more care than they would receive if they just went straight home. It is also a place for people who don’t need a hospital stay, but they are getting into a “critical” state and need round the clock support for several days in order to get them “back on track.” It is not as restrictive as a hospital environment, but it is more restrictive than an outpatient day program.
- Once our son was in respite, the caseworker told me that since there were so many “important” people looking at this situation, that the behavioral center would be hard-pressed to make our son leave after 10 days. During our son’s time in respite, DMHAS would be working hard to find an appropriate supportive living situation for our son. When I asked how long our sone might be in respite, the caseworker said it might be a month or it could be 4 months. It all depended on getting funding either from Title19 or Social Security Disability benefits. The caseworker’s main objective, at this point, was to get our son into respite and get us back to CT as quickly as possible.
- There were also some other financial alternatives that the caseworker was going to pursue, such as something called the “Bridge” program, which provides for short term financial support until other funding becomes available.
The caseworker had also given my son a Website to go through at: Mental Health Recovery. This is an excellent Website, with some great information in it, however, when our son tried to go through it, he became totally overwhelmed, because the language was at too high a level for him to read and understand, and it really provides for alot of cognitive overload for someone who has learning issues as well as Bipolar Disorder. When the caseworker asked our son if he had gone to this Website, and our son told the caseworker no (the first time he asked), the caseworker told our son that since he was working so hard for him that our son needed to do his part and read through the Website at least 30 minutes a day. Our son was too embarrassed about his reading issues to explain that to the caseworker. So he simply agreed. I sat down with our son before the next phone call from the caseworker and went through the Website with him. He became quite overwhelmed and couldn’t get through too much of it at one shot.
The caseworker also asked to talk with our son about the respite suggestion. They talked, and after they were finished talking, our son told me he really did not want to go to respite, but he felt like the caseworker was really pressuring him to do it. This caseworker has a very aggressive approach and is overwhelming even for me. I reassured our son that I would confer with some experts, like therapists, psychiatrists, professionals in the mental health care industry, and most importantly, my husband, and we would come to a general consensus about what the outcome of the proposal should be.
More on this in the next posting.
