How to Advocate

Have you registered to vote? If you have not done so, contact the CMH Customer Service Representative and the representative can assist you in this process.

Find out how you can help to ensure no more cuts to the public mental health system. The Advocate Handbook has been provided to you by this CMH to give guidance on how to make contacts with your elected government officials.

CURRENT ISSUE:

Significant gaps in the public mental health safety net exist in the tri-county region – Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham Counties. These gaps are the result of:

	a long standing history of insufficient funding for the state’s public mental health system, made worse by recent and proposed cuts
	significant disparities in funding that exist across the state’s public mental health system

Recent and proposed cuts: The recent cuts to the CMH system and potential cuts in next year’s state budget will only cause these gaps to grow. Action is needed, now, to close these gaps in services to the most vulnerable in our community and prevent these gaps from growing.

FY 2009 Executive Order: The CMH system suffered a $10 million cut as part of the May 5 Executive Order; the local CMH, the Community Mental Health Authority of Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham Counties,

lost $200,000

FY 2010 Budget: If this cut were to be annualized in FY 2010, this cut of $40 million would mean a cut to the CMH of Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham Counties – depending upon the method used to distribute the cut, statewide – of:

$800,000 to $1.6 million.

When combined with increases in health care and other costs, the gap in CMH’s FY 2010 budget could be:

$2 million to $3 million

Cuts of this magnitude will leave a very large segment of the tri-county population unserved. The time for voluntary action is now!