The November 9th memo from Mike Moseley on the State's DMH plan to allocate CIT funds evenly across the 25 LMEs ($2000 each), while keeping the other half for their own purposes, seems like a simplistic attempt to give LMEs a small cookie jar that is unlikely to provide much more than token support for the much needed CIT program.  For example, consider the Smoky Mountain Center in the Western part of our state.  There are 12 rural counties within the LME.  The State's plan would make $166.67 available to each county (if the LME/area director chose to divide the funds equally across the counties) which would hardly cover the salary and travel expense to have the county sheriff to travel to Sylva, NC (location of the area director) for a 1 hour meeting to discuss the need for a CIT program in each county.  In contrast, single county urban LME's including Wake, Durham, and Guilford Counties, would receive the $2000 to "expand or improve their existing CIT programs."  How is that for state leadership!  Furthermore, once the money is parceled out, what indicator of performance will be used to judge how well the money was spent?  Or will there be a future audit which indicates how the money was spent for other purposes -- since it was so miniscule to even begin to address the CIT program in each of the LMEs?  Or will the twisted logic of the DMH leadership use this CIT funding example as how they have contributed to developing community support programs and hence will be used to justify closing Dorothea Dix and further reduce the number of psychiatric hospital beds in the State? 

The truth is that the CIT program was first initiated in Wake County because of leadership from within the county and not the state.  It is my opinion that our Wake County program will serve in the leadership role of how this program is implemented across the state.  For example,  our NAMI Wake president, Frank Edwards, obtained funds for the upcoming statewide CIT conference (November 26th) from the Governor's Crime Commission.  This fact is conveniently lost in the discussion of the program.

CIT is a worthwhile program and continues to need leadership to make it work across the State.  It is unfortunate that the Div of MH/DD/SAS did not choose to fund a proven community partner such as NAMI to implement expansion of the successful efforts already begun in Wake County.

        submitted by gerry akland