Mental health advocates are raising concerns about a state Department of Health and Human Services plan that could result in the closure of several mental health peer recovery centers.
They’re considered a vital support, providing life skills training and companionship for people struggling with mental illness.
Maine has 12 of these centers, but under a new state formula and plan, they could be capped at eight, putting some centers geographically out of reach for clients.
Just past the fire department in downtown Livermore Falls is a bright blue building that’s the home of Friends Together. It’s a peer support and recovery center where anyone, with or without a mental illness, is meant to feel welcome.
About 30 people come here regularly on weekdays, including Frances Moreau. She’s knitting a pair of bright pink mittens she’ll donate to local school children.
“This place has helped me a lot, because two years ago yesterday I lost my fiance,” she says.
Moreau says this peer recovery center is a safe place to spend the day and socialize.
“I call them my friends and family, because that’s what they are,” she says.
Friends Together offers daily activities, from crafts and card games to classes on nutrition and mental wellness.
“It gives them an idea that recovery is possible. You can lead a full life, regardless of what kind of diagnosis you have,” says Marge Grant, the director of Friends Together.
Grant says peer centers offer those with mental illness or other life challenges something they can’t find elsewhere: social support from those with shared experiences. Peer centers are also inexpensive, costing about $10 per person per day to operate.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration recognizes peer support as a critical element of recovery that reduces health care costs.
“People who would not say two words when I first started working here five years ago, I have seen them come out of their shell,” Grant says. “And they’re not as afraid to go out in their communities.”
But under a plan by Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, places like Friends Together could close.
In early March, DHHS released a request for proposals to award one contract for each of the state’s eight health districts. But currently there are 12 centers.
The loss of at least a quarter of the state’s peer centers sounded alarm bells for advocates like Simonne Maline of the Consumer Council System of Maine.
“Say you’re in Rumford, and the closest center is in Lewiston — people won’t go,” she says. “There are huge transportation issues.”
This week, DHHS released an amendment that said it could choose to award multiple contracts within each district. When asked by email whether there would still be a cap of eight peer centers total, a spokeswoman for DHHS said no.
But lawmakers like Democratic Rep. Drew Gattine, co-chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, say it’s not clear. And DHHS is restricted in what it can discuss about RFPs.
“When you look at the RFP itself, it isn’t really clear whether a lot of what’s really good at the peer centers will be preserved,” Gattine says.
Under the RFP, DHHS will require peer centers to put more emphasis on vocational training. Troy Henderson, the president of the Maine Association of Peer Support and Recovery Centers and the coordinator of a peer center in Augusta, says that requirement just doesn’t make sense because not everyone who uses a peer center is able to work.
“When some people come to the center, sometimes they’re just trying to survive,” he says. “We’re front line.”
Henderson says he doesn’t understand why DHHS is restructuring peer centers without consulting those who operate and use them.
“It’s a little odd to me that the state’s training for intentional peer support, one of the things that’s often said in that training is ‘Nothing about us, without us,’” he says. “And yet the state comes up with the RFP about us, without us.”
Henderson says he wants lawmakers to toss out the RFP. That will preserve all the state’s peer centers, who can then work collaboratively with DHHS to incorporate some of the department’s goals, but with more flexibility.
