Family Advisory Council
St. Joseph’s Mental Health Care Family Advisory Council understands that families are essential to maximizing the recovery of their ill family members and that the entire family is often impacted by the illness of one's loved one.
Our goal is to help facilitate effective and on-going communication between family members and staff, while ensuring family members are engaged as full partners in treatment as well as discharge/transition planning for their loved one.
We advocate for the best quality of life, care and treatment for both inpatients and outpatients.
We expect professional caregivers to treat each patient as they would want their own family members treated.
We remind others that people with severe and persistent mental illness come from families just like theirs and mine.
The Family Advisory Councils is part of a provincial body of family councils. To learn more visit: www.ofcan.org
History
The Family Advisory Council was created in 1997, with the purpose of assisting staff to clearly identify ways in which the delivery of mental health care can be more sensitive and responsive to patient and family needs.
Mission statement
Promote a cooperative, mutually supportive, and caring environment from which people with mental illness will benefit… a voice for all family members.
Values
Respect
• Honour our family members in sickness and in health
• Appreciate the work of staff
• Welcome the contribution of all family members
Excellence
• Face each day with patience, integrity, and determination
• Be creative and resourceful with our gifts, skills, and talents
• Build on our past achievements
• Work as a team
Compassion
• Listen and learn from others
• Understand families’ needs, realities, expectations, and hopes
• Give from the heart
• Sustain the spirit
Family Charter of Rights
The following statements are intended to reflect the needs and rights of families as partners in the delivery of mental health care for their loved ones at St. Joseph’s Health Care London.
Families have the right to:
• A mental health care program in which family involvement is valued and encouraged
• Respect and understanding
• Inclusion in the process of diagnosis, treatment and discharge planning of their loved one
• Education about their loved one’s diagnosis
• The best treatments, practices and therapies that maximize recovery and rehabilitation for their loved one
• Feedback between caregivers and professionals
• Information on community resources and how to access them
• A healing environment free of stigma
• Caring staff who understand that the whole family is impacted by their loved ones’ mental illness
Created by the Family Advisory Council of St. Joseph’s Mental Health Care Programs
“As we often say, there are really only eight kinds of people affected by mental disorder. It’s a very small list, but we all know someone on it: someone’s mother, daughter, sister or wife; someone’s father, brother, husband or son.”
~ Julia Nunes and Scott Simmie
Beyond Crazy, Journeys Through Mental Illness