10/22/2009

Mental Health Action Team

Meeting 10-22-09

Debrief Activity

Activity:  Community Meeting_____ Date: __10-20-09_______

What went well

  • GABRIELA!!!!!
  • Our preparation—different people took different jobs
  • Over half the room was community members—the Latino community showed up
  • Language—our persistence to have the meeting be Spanish dominant
  • Small groups
  • Impromptu sharing at the end in which recorders/facilitators shared something from the group discussion
  • Good participation—small groups interacted well—professionals were very personable and didn’t speak over people
  • Very fluid
  • Energy in the room
  • Barbara’s support and confidence in us, and her compliments (also, Barbara was very relaxed—she even took off her shoes!)
  • No child care issues—no one showed up with kids
  • They respected our suggestions for the powerpoints
  • Powerpoints were shorter
  • Latino community said, “We should do this again.”  They essentially asked, “what’s next.”  So it seems that the meeting was energizing for the Latino community.
  • Gender balanced—the men showed up
  • Good location
  • We stayed on time
  • Note:  The pre-meeting with community stakeholders went really well also.

Needs improvement

  • Confirm that the people doing simultaneous translation know what it means to do simultaneous translation
  • Set-up of the room (never followed up with more than 4 people to a table; bad set-up with the tables right in front of the powerpoint screen)
  • Assign people to more jobs, like a timekeeper
  • What was with the time, anyway???  (even though we ended on time, we didn’t follow the times on the agenda)
  • Have a pow-wow before the meeting to make sure every table had a recorder and a facilitator
  • Maybe get to the meeting earlier to get set-up?
  • Microphone for the main part of things—Gabriela and Teresita needed a mic
  • Our recruiting
  • Possibly have people stay at the same table for discussion

o The positive of this is that people gain confidence and share more if they stay in the same group.

o The negative is that people often join a group because they might know someone.  If we have them switch groups, we can help them get to know someone else and that sharing can bring surprises.

  • Moving to different tables for discussion needs to be more fluid—we could use numbered tables or colored agendas—other strategies for moving groups.

We needed two registration tables—one for signing in and one for the headsets.  Or we needed a bigger registration table.

Next steps

  • Get list of attendees from Barbara—Katherine
  • TimeBank—Stephanie is going to the orientation and will e-mail us the info—discuss this at Nov. Action Team meeting
  • Warmline and Lyn Malofsky
  • Mental Health Task Force—continue attending the monthly meetings—Stephanie will attend the Nov 10th meeting
  • Write to your county supervisor to tell them NOT to make the proposed budget cuts in the area of mental health—Gabriela will send us the script she used and dates for protesting/meeting at the County