The Heroic Agencies Vision
We envision a future where clients' heroic stories overshadow descriptions of illness and client-directed partnerships revolutionize "mental health" as we know it.
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The Heart and Soul Conference
June 10-12, 2004
Click here to view photos from the conference
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The Mission of Heroicagencies.org
The word “heroic” provides a guiding metaphor for our mission. The dictionary tells us that “heroic” means characteristic of courage and great achievements. It is a word that embodies our view of clients. It also symbolizes the efforts of those front line workers and administrators, like you, who aspire to bring their places of employment more in line with client-directed values—to privilege clients’ resources, ideas, preferences, and theories, as well as their perceptions of the process and outcome of therapy. Those of you who hold such aspirations have inspired this website. Our mission is to provide support, information, and networking for those who are challenging mental health business as usual and striving for full partnerships with those we serve. This site fosters a community of heroic agencies that are on a quest to replace the diminishing practices of the medical model with client-directed practices guided by client-rated outcomes. We seek to encourage each other to act in our most heroic ways—to partner with clients to make services effective, accountable, and just. We see outcome-informed work as a way to undermine mental heath status quo and as a vehicle for real change
Imagine a new drama of therapy in which clients assume their rightful roles as heroes and heroines of the therapeutic stage; imagine partnering with clients to legitimize services to third party payers based on the benefit of services with no need to report confidential information or render a diagnosis. Imagine clients in charge of every aspect of therapy and receiving services based on their ideas, their theories of change. Imagine using clients’ feedback to guide all decisions. Imagine no more diagnostic workups, treatment plans, intake forms; no personal or confidential information divulged or electronically submitted for payment purposes; or any other form or practice that has no relevance to outcome. Imagine simply submitting outcome data that triggers payment automatically for unlimited meetings as long as clients are benefiting. Imagine a world wide network of therapists and agencies making heroic efforts to assign clients key roles in determining the way therapy is both delivered and funded.
You may say that we are dreamers, but we are not the only ones.
In fact, all of these things are already happening. Imagine for the first time in history that mental health professionals will have proof of the effectiveness and value of their day-to-day work and no longer need to rely on the medical model for legitimacy. Imagine no longer gaining acceptance by adopting the questionable language and practices of the medical profession only to secure the permanent second-class status to which therapy has been relegated since the time of Freud. Imagine establishing an identity separate from the field of medicine. It is easy if you try . . .