Objective: The study evaluated the effect of California's Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) on the structure, volume, location, and patient centeredness of Los Angeles County public mental health services.
Methods: This prospective mixed-methods study (2006-2013) was based in five Los Angeles County public mental health clinics, all with usual care and three with full-service partnerships (FSPs). FSPs are MHSA-funded programs designed to "do whatever it takes" to provide intensive, recovery-oriented, team-based, integrated services for clients with severe mental illness.
Treatment that prolongs the lives of people with HIV/AIDS and improves their quality of life is relatively recent and little is known about factors that may predict their successful re-entry to the workforce. No data exist concerning the effectiveness of programs to assist people with HIV/AIDS in their efforts to return to work. We used logistic regression and Kaplan-Meier survival curves to predict return to work using data from 126 individuals who participated in an HIV/AIDS return to work program.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn addition to being an outcome, workforce reentry is a process: People with HIV/AIDS attempting to go back to work must make initial decisions to engage in such an attempt, they then must go through a series of steps that may include re-education or retraining, job searches, résumé development, and other activities. Sustaining employment, in turn, entails its own set of activities. People attempting workforce reentry may also experience barriers on their journeys back to work, they may employ certain strengths to reach their goals, and they may use resources to facilitate preparation for work.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the advent of more effective treatments and corresponding improvement in morbidity and mortality, people living with HIV and AIDS are increasingly considering a return to the workplace. This study examined subjective and objective indicators of need among a sample of 235 HIV-infected individuals entering a vocational rehabilitation programme for people with HIV. In addition to help with training and job placement, participants indicated a need for assistance with finances, money management, housing access and access to health care, as well as with alcohol or drug problems, legal problems and social relationships.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current climate of economic constraint in community-based mental health services has all but required psychosocial rehabilitation (PSR) programs to demonstrate their effectiveness by adopting outcome assessment systems. Agencies of disparate size and varying degrees of sophistication are now responding to mandates to systematically monitor program outcomes. In doing so, however, PSR practitioners and administrators are faced with a bewildering array of competing measures, some of which are impractical, costly, or irrelevant for capturing the outcomes of PSR services (Blankertz & Cook, 1998).
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