MHAI co-founded and currently chairs the Mental Health Summit, a coalition comprised of persons with mental illness and their families, advocacy groups and mental health service providers. The goal of the Summit is to preserve and increase funding for mental health services in Illinois.

Summit activities include working with the media, advocating with Illinois legislators and members of the executive branch, building coalitions with traditional and non-traditional allies, and identifying issues which may be used to focus legislative and public attention on the problems caused by the underfunding of mental health services in Illinois.

Mental Health Summit Proposed Priorities for 2008

1. Community mental health Funding
   • No diversion or sweeps of 718 Medicaid Trust or the Mental Health Funds
   • No caps on DMH community contracts
   • Preservation of other savings in mental health system
1. Savings from closure/downsizing of hospitals
2. Savings from McKesson Disease Management Program
3. Savings from reduction in IMD populations
4. Lockbox funds
• Cost of doing business increase
  
  
2. Improve Medicaid rates for
• Community providers
• Psychiatrists
• Inpatient mental health care
  
  
3. Insure effective operation of Administrative Services Organization
• Creating formal mechanism for consumer/provider input
• Collection of appropriate data
  
  
4. Increase funding for supportive housing
   
   
5. Fund community services for proven criminal justice diversion programs including:
• Mental Health Courts
• Persons with mental illnesses leaving prisons and jails
  
  
6. Increase funding for supported employment
   
   
7. Increase funding for community mental health services for children and adolescents
   
   
8. Increase "comfort allowance" for nursing home residents
   
   
9. Insure funding for co-occuring substance abuse disorders
   
   
10. Conduct commitment/medication hearings at private hospitals
    
    
11. Implement tele-psychiatry to improve rural mental health care
    
    
12. Eliminate delays in admissions to state-operated facilities
    
    
13. Conduct training of personnel involved in commitment/
    admission in compliance with Public Act 93-0376.
    
    
14. Support funding priorities established by the Children's Mental Health Partnership for 2009
    
    
15. Add eating disorders to state parity law