Private copies:
  Accountability Caucus Online
  Social Accountability Plank Workshop Participants

To the <cinmhc> list:

I attended the National Summit starting on Friday 8/27.  The
following is a fragmentary report based on my experience.  I
have written it as a preliminary statement only, and it
reflects my opinion only.  Some days from now, I imagine, a
more complete and authoritative description will be 
forthcoming.

The Summit as I saw it was an intense product-oriented 
experience.  This was quite unlike an Alternatives Conference,
because the participants were predominantly veteran activists
with a purpose — to construct a national client organization.
There were certainly some first-time persons there, especially
from the host state Oregon.  I believe the work environment was
good for these people, too, and that they learned a lot.

We were told that about 450 persons attended the Summit.  It
was quite an extraordinary event, and it was plain that new
alliances and connections were forming.  I think one would 
have to say that it was a milestone in the development of the
clients movement.  The staff — which I think was mainly
from the Clearinghouse and the Oregon co-sponsors — did an
excellent job.  Recognition has to go Marie Verna, and most
especially to Joe Rogers for his insight in bringing this 
event to pass.  Joe’s hard work in bringing so much of the 
detail to focus and fruition was really important to the
success of this conference.

Three ‘plank’ workshops were facilitated by Californians —
Sally Zinman (Forced Treatment), Jay Mahler (Recovery) and 
Andrew Phelps (Social Accountability).  Maria Maceira was the 
co-facilitator for the Social Accountability ‘plank’.  

The focus of the information flow seemed to be the workshops.
My understanding is that their products are to be written up
and distributed/circulated in the near future.  The ‘final
versions’ of the planks/action plans are to be put on the
Clearinghouse website in something like a month’s time.  I'm
sure the details of the process will come out fairly soon,
i.e. maybe somebody knows them, but I’m mainly playing it
‘by ear’.  Of particular note though is that not much of the
workshop material was available yet conference-wide as of
Sunday, as far as I knew.  The Sunday morning panel of the
facilitators was not asked to present anything.  We had 
instead open mike and took comments from the floor.

As Facilitator for the Social Accountability Plank workshop,
I mainly focused on the business at hand, and — who knows? —
I may have missed some things that went on elsewhere.  So I 
want to report a bit on our ‘plank’ workshop.  Hehehe we 
talked about it in terms of the ‘nails’.  

Our workshop was based on an initiative by the Accountability
Caucus.  See <http://www.madman-bbs.net/accountability> 
for more information on this.  We had 10-15 devoted participants,
an unduplicated count of about 20 overall.  This included
three Accountability Caucus members, myself, Maria Maceira,
and Phil Winn.  John Hood III of San Diego was one of the key
participants, and Trudi Clifton of the Santa Clara County MHB, 
a newcomer to national conferences, also sat in on some of 
our sessions.  Others came from Oregon, New Jersey, North
Carolina, and Nebraska, among other places.  Marian Drake (OR)
and Irene Lynch (NJ) had also worked with us online prior to 
the beginning of the Summit.

The first day (Friday) we talked about how we understand 
social accountability.  At the Saturday morning General 
Session, we presented our workshop from the point of view
of giving the conference participants some understanding or
intuition about what we were about.  Eight participants spoke
1-2 minutes each regarding what social accountability meant 
for them.  I also read an email message from Accountability
Caucus member B.J. Morganti.  

We spent Saturday deciding how to design and write up a
‘social accountability plank’.  We were pleased with our
morning presentation and went in the direction of writing
up individual statements about what accountability means to
different people.  Eventually our meeting turned into a kind 
of writing workshop, with small groups huddling together and
discussing individual texts.  

We were also expected to come up with an "action plan" for
Social Accountability.  This is — I gather — so that the
outcomes of the workshops can be assembled into a national
action plan that is broadly acceptable to the clients 
movement across the land.

The issues of the ‘accountability plank’ background 
position paper <http://www.mhselfhelp.org/accountability.html>
are twofold.  One is "maturing the movement based on focusing
more on issues of respect," and the other is "strained human 
relations in the clients movement."  We developed these themes 
and restructured the presentation considerably during the
workshop.

We have three draft statements in our "action plan."  These
are of course subject to criticism and revision over the
next month, as the text wends its way into the final version
for the Clearinghouse website.  We urge the following
actions on the part of the clients movement:

1. Incorporate the topic of social accountability in training workshops;
2. Educate the general society regarding the nature of madness; and
3. Develop reasonable ways of distinguishing controversial activity from ‘dissing’ (disrespectful activity).

Summary.  It was a successful conference, new ground was
broken and important outcomes are to be anticipated.  The
Social Accountability Plank workshop hopes that its 
contribution will be of some assistance to the development
of the new national clients agenda/organization.

Respectfully

Andrew Phelps