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What is the National PLAN Alliance?
The National PLAN (Planned Lifetime Assistance Network) Alliance is the umbrella organization for 26 PLAN organizations located in 21 states. PLAN is a care model originated by parents to provide long-term support for their loved ones with mental illness or other physical or mental disabilities. The mission of these PLAN organizations, including PLAN of North Texas, is to provide future care planning services to parents and their adult children with a disability.
What is Plan of North Texas?
PLAN (Planned Living Assistance Network of North Texas, Inc) is a member of the National PLAN Alliance and is located in Dallas, Texas. PLAN of North Texas was founded by parents, for parents. PLAN of North Texas is a non profit membership organization that provides care planning services to parents and their adult children who have serious and persistent neurobiological disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and manic depression.
PLAN of North Texas is also a member of the Center for Nonprofit Management in Dallas.
What is unique about PLAN of North Texas?
PLAN of North Texas addresses two key concerns of families with a relative with mental illness:
Continuity of Care:
Families provide many services including health and dental care, monitoring of care and medications, housing, transportation, social activities and recreation and, often, financial oversight. As parents age, a concern arises over who will replace them in caring for the family member with a mental illness. Addressing and providing a solution to this concern was the driving force behind the founding of PLAN of North Texas in 1991.
PLAN of North Texas staff, working with the family, develop a Personal Care Plan for immediate or future services and the delivery of those services. The mutual trust that is developed over time between the PLAN of North Texas professional staff members, the parents and the adult with mental illness is the key to the successful creation and implementation of a Personal Care Plan. Our approach joins the talents and knowledge of parents with the skills and expertise of the professional staff to optimize the future benefits received by the adult with mental illness.
A key component of care continuity is how to pay for the services, previously provided by the family, and in future to be provided by a service provider such as PLAN of North Texas.
The primary obligation and responsibility and obligation of the family is to ensure that there are sufficient funds available to meet the future needs of the adult with mental illness. PLAN of North Texas does not have the financial resources available to it to make the services available. Families must develop a financial plan, complementing the Personal Care Plan, to accomplish the objective of being able to secure services that were previously provided without charge by the family. We can assist families in finding knowledgeable professionals who will advise them on how to structure their financial resources (usually through a Supplemental Needs Trust) to pay for uninterrupted caregiving.
In addition, PLAN staff can coordinate among the various service providers, e.g. psychiatrists, lawyers, estate planners, etc. so that the needs of the adult with mental illness are met in a mutually supportive and beneficial way.
Fragmentation of services:
Mental health professionals argue that success in dealing with individuals with a mental illness derives from having a broad range of high quality programs delivered consistently over time. Unfortunately, too often the reality is far from the goal.
The Personal Care Plan deals with events that will occur in the future, but it also concerns itself with current needs. Indeed, there is much that can be done in the present to enhance the quality of life for the adult with mental illness utilizing the various programs offered by PLAN of North Texas. The staff encourages the family to work toward the integration of the individual with mental illness into society to the greatest extent possible. Achieving that objective requires that we provide not just the traditional case management activity and psychosocial therapy found in many locations but that we integrate those activities with programs to improve the educational level and social skills of the adult with mental illness.
It is this broad and coordinated approach that separates PLAN of North Texas from other service providers who may offer but one or two of the programs found at PLAN of North Texas.
A Brief History of PLAN of North Texas
In 1990, two parents noted that relatives of adults with mental illness assume long term roles of caregivers and case managers. These parents recognized that as relatives grew older their capacity to continue to act in these roles diminished, yet the need to provide for continuity of care remained intact. There was no readily available alternative. Members of the Dallas Alliance for the Mentally Ill were invited to join these two parents in creating a non profit corporation that would assume the case management role for adults with mental illness. Within a year, PLAN of North Texas was incorporated and, in March of 1992, received its non profit designation from the IRS.
Two years later, in April of 1994, PLAN of North Texas hired its first experienced psychiatric social worker and case management services began three months later. Case management was just the beginning:
In 1995, a program to provide clients with opportunities to form friendships and to learn social interaction skills was begun;
A Respite Service was started to provide temporary case management to a client when the caregiving family was required to be elsewhere;
In 1996 planning began for a housing program that ultimately culminated in the completion in 1999 of IRIS Place, a HUD funded facility comprised of 18 one bedroom apartments and a community center;
In 1997, PLAN of North Texas sponsored the Texas Attorney's Planning Guide for Representing Families of Persons with Disabilities -- a comprehensive guide to legal matters that pertain to estate planning, benefits, and care of disabled family members;
The Long Range Planning committee developed a training program for adults with mental illness of PLAN of North Texas member families;
An Executive Director was hired in August of 2002 to direct the staff and future development of the organization.
PLAN of North Texas has come a long way. From its initial 25 members, it has grown to 213 member families, 13 professional members and 85 clients receiving care management services. Approximately 90 adults with mental illness participate in the Social Skills development and Education programs.
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