Real Voices Conference

Consumer Summit Observations

I had the privilege of attending the  2008 St. Louis Consumer Summit at St. Patricks in St. Louis.  It was fairly interesting on day one, made so primarily by the input of people like Robert Qualls, but it didn't get really good until  day 2 when consumer participants across all three disciplines of psychiatric services, DD and alcohol and drug abuse services took over the agenda. That was an exceptional day in which to participate.  As that second day occurred, I wished the Commission, Legislators, and more of my staff could have seen it.  I was struck, particularly, by two personal insights. 

First, we professionals have talked forever about how difficult it is to break down "silos" between us as we try to work across state division and department lines; and those difficulties for us are real, in part because we are always worrying about the risks associated with true collaboration or service integration strategies on that portion of the service world we control. 

Consumer, Family, Youth Summit prelude to conference

 The focus of the first day of the Consumer, Family and Youth Leadership Summit was on leadership, featuring a session on inspirational leadership, led by keynote speaker Gregory Holliday, Ph.D. Members of the audience shared their thoughts on leadership.

Dr. Holliday later facilitated a panel of leaders in a discussion on what leadership means, with panel members sharing their experiences regarding leadership in their own lives and audience members asking questions.

The second day of the conference had advocacy as its focus, with personal perspectives provided by a panel discussion on Advocacy in Action.  

Preliminary planning for a full-fledged conference in 2009 was the topic of discussion during day two's afternoon session. Participants discussed and shared ideas on the potential format, location, and speakers.

In the first photo, Dr. Greg Holliday discusses inspirational leadership. The  second photo shows the Journey to Leadership panel of Robert Qualls, Howard Allen, David Helling, Jeff Johnson, Lisa Nothaus, and Justin Idleburg.