Chair Cabán on smaller clubhouse funding advocacy with OMB
Cabán presses on whether DOHMH has asked OMB to fund smaller clubhouses. Martin says conversations are ongoing. Dr. Petit reiterates the reprocurement was based on community feedback and national model standards, with positive quality-of-life and employment outcomes.
Thank you.
I'm going to follow up on a couple of the things that you asked about, Chair.
I have so many questions, but I'm going to try to be brief.
I'm going to ask you all to be succinct where you can.
Going back to the clubhouses.
In terms of, you know, I appreciate the really eager and sincere sort of response.
Like, we want to work with you guys to make sure that we are keeping these smaller clubhouses running.
But I want to know what that means.
Like, have you guys asked OMB for this?
Because, like, that's probably one of the biggest roles that you're able to do here is saying, hey, we need this.
Funding included in the adopted.
So have you asked about that particularly?
Yeah, so let me share what we have done and then I'll kick it to Dr.
Petit to see if there's anything else to add.
We have re-procured, as you know, the 13 clubhouses to make sure that we raise the standards and expand the capacity.
That was done back in 2024.
All 13 of those are now fully operational.
The conversations are ongoing with regard to what we can do with the remaining smaller clubhouses, but I'll pass it to Dr.
Petit if he has anything else to add.
Yeah, thank you, Commissioner.
I do want to reiterate that the whole purpose of the reprocurement was to really take in all of the feedback that we had gotten, some of our own understanding of how these clubhouses had been functioning
up until that date, and really committed to this national clubhouse model and really wanting to invest in the types of services that we really believe in, which are really grounded on sort of, you know,
Quality of care and looking at metrics a little bit differently through, you know, some of these outcome measures like quality of life, loneliness, and employment.
And what we are seeing is that we've made a significant impact in some of those measures, and we can definitely find ways of having further conversations.
And totally, I hear that.
I get that the model is working.
What I also want to make sure is that it is being, it is participant-driven, and that, you know, probably the most important thing that we could listen to are participants saying that they want to stay where they are.
I want to move on just because I know that you put this on the record already and colleagues want to ask questions too, but the other follow-up I had, two more follow-ups that I have on the chair's question is on the youth club houses.