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Updated Mental Health Systems Diversity Statement

Jul 22, 2020

To Our Community,

The team at MHS has spent the past several weeks in personal and professional reflection as we have struggled with the events in our community throughout the months of May and June.  Out of this reflection, we remind ourselves that we support our community and are proud to serve it.  We write this to reaffirm our commitment to our community – to our unwavering support of the BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and other underserved and marginalized individuals and communities.

At MHS, we are committed to our ongoing growth and learning – as an agency and as individual members of the team.

And we can do better.

We want to share with our communities the steps we are taking to attend to our growth.  MHS has brought in a professional consultant to assist with organizational growth and improvements in areas of inclusion, equity, and diversity.  Our weekly staff trainings have focused exclusively on diversity, its role in our clinical work, and the introspective process required of us all.  We began a book club and are collectively reading and discussing literature to help increase our awareness of the pervasiveness of covert and overt racism. We are reviewing all policies and procedures related to our presentation to the community, e.g. our paperwork, our physical space, etc.

We know this is not about us.  It is about you.  It is about the community.  We wanted to speak to our process and our period of reflection in response to all that has occurred.

We are here to learn.  We are here to listen.  We are here to support you.

You matter to us.