Issues : Community-Based Services

Community-Based Services

People with mental disabilities have a legal right to obtain mental health services in the least restrictive setting possible. The resources listed below are intended to help consumers, families, advocates and others secure those services.

The Integration Mandate

The Supreme Court's 1997 decision in Olmstead v. LC upheld the Americans with Disability Act's integration mandate requiring services for people with mental and physical disabilities to be provided in the least restrictive setting possible. The decision has important implications for people with mental illnesses and cognitive disorders.

• The Olmstead Decision: The Supreme Court's decision on the ADA mandate of community-based care and how states must implement it
• Recovery in the Community: A report on how states fund psychiatric rehabilitation and case management services.
• A New Vision for Public Mental Health: A model law

News

• Lawsuit Yields Agreement to Create New Housing and Community Services for Seniors and People with Disabilities
  Mark Chambers’ dream “to be part of the world outside” the nursing home he’s lived in for eight years will soon come true. Over the next five years, Chambers and several hundred other residents of the Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco will move to independent apartments linked to the supportive services they need, according to a settlement announced on November 27, 2007. Read more..

• "Program offers job opportunities for mentally ill," a report by John Overall of KVOA News 4 in Tucson, Arizona that vividly illustrates the success of the new "Choices" program at DK Advocates in helping people with mental illnesses get back in the workforce.