Assessing Advocacy Services for the Mentally Disabled: An Evaluation of the Mental Health Advocacy Project

摘要

This evaluation report examines the Mental Health Advocacy Project (MHAP), an effort to offer direct legal advocacy services to mentally disabled persons in two California State hospitals sponsored by the Los Angeles County and Beverly Hills Bar Associations. A brief history of the MHAP which operated between January 1977 and December 1978 is followed by a summary of the evaluation design. Data sources included interviews and questionnaires completed by MHAP staff and volunteers as well as hospital staff, patient records from Fairview State Hospital, and MHAP documents. The report first discusses MHAP activities at Fairview State Hospital which provides long - term care to developmentally disabled patients who are severely retarded. Advocacy services at Metropolitan State Hospital, a facility for individuals diagnosed as mentally ill, are detailed. Because the MHAP depended heavily on trained volunteers to provide services, their characteristics and assessments of the project are reviewed. The evaluation also considered several organizational features of the MHAP, including sponsors, its independence from any governmental agency, funding, and relationships with hospital staff. The evaluation concluded that the MHAP increased awareness and knowledge of patients' rights among the hospital staff, patients, and the community. Furthermore, intervention of advocates at Fairview led to higher levels of service delivery for MHAP clients and increased documentation of staff activities with patients. The MHAP, however, was unable to maintain a presence at the two hospitals because of the great resistance and hostility it provoked among administrators and staff and did not develop any working arrangements with other groups that might have produced changes in the State system. Tables, data collection instruments, and six references are included.