Welcome to the CASRA Newsletter

In this issue:

• Registration for the first session of the CASRA Learning Series is now open!
• The soft bigotry of low expectations
• The harmful reality of American healthcare
• How a billionaire shaped the current occupant of the white house's homeless policy
• LA rolls back some anti-camping laws

Enjoy!

If you have news you would like to share or a colleague you would like to spotlight because of the great work they do or just because they are a great person or both, let us know by contacting joe@casra.org.

A benefit of membership in CASRA is receiving four hours of training for your staff. For more information, please contact joe@casra.org

If you are a CASRA member agency and would like to advertise your learning opportunity, training or event for the benefit of other CASRA member agencies, please contact us at events@casra.org.
There are a few guidelines:
-You are a CASRA Member Agency
-Your event is free of charge
and, as a reminder the Newsletter is published on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month

A Photo Gallery now resides on the EVENTS page of the CASRA website and currently consists of albums of the 2024 Spring and the 2025 Fall CASRA Gatherings. We plan on adding more albums in the future.

If you have photos of your agency's events you would like to share with other CASRA members, contact joe@casra.org.

To view the current albums in the Photo Gallery, CLICK HERE.

The  CASRA Learning Library and its contents are free to CASRA member organizations and their staff. The Library is located in the Member Portal on the CASRA website here. More detailed instructions on how to access and use the Library can also be found on the CASRA website when logged on the Portal.

Our hope is that the Library's offerings will provide learning opportunities that will serve as part of CASRA agencies' onboarding processes for new staff, as well as be a resource of Recovery oriented values and practices for all staff. 

Access to the Learning Library is currently limited to CASRA member agencies and their staff. We hope to expand availability in the future.

For questions and more information contact Joe Ruiz - joe@casra.org.

Our member agencies are continually looking for new employees or volunteers to join their workforce.

To see current openings and find out additional information about CASRA Member Agencies, please click below.

CASRA facilitates a number of support groups for people working at CASRA member agencies. The support groups provide people working in similar roles opportunities to share experiences, information, and challenges. They meet monthly for approximantely one hour. for more information contact the person listed for each group.

Social Rehabilitation Facilities (SRF)
Meets: First Tuesday of the month at 1 PM

Human Resources
Meets: First Thursday of the month at 11 AM

Employment/Vocational Rehabilitation Services
Meets: First Thursday of the month at 3 PM

For information regarding any of the above groups contact:
Chad Costello, chad@casra.org

Wellness Services (Well Talk)
The Wellness Services support group is now online. For more info contact Joe Ruiz, joe@casra.org

CASRA is a statewide organization of private, not-for-profit, public benefit corporations that serve clients of the California public mental health system.

Member agencies provide a variety of services that are designed to enhance the quality of life and community participation of youth, adults and older adults living with challenging mental health issues. Read more

The California Association of Social Rehabilitation Agencies

Mailing Address:
3350 E. 7th Street, #509
Long Beach, CA 90804

Email: casra@casra.org

Phone: (562) 343-2621

To reach us: use our Contact Form

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN!

Two Paths:
Psychiatric Rehabilitation
and the
Consumer/Lived Experience Movement

October 7, 2026
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM (PDT)

The history of psychiatric rehabilitation and the consumer/lived experience movement represents two distinct but increasingly interconnected paths toward recovery, self-determination, and community inclusion. This presentation traces the parallel development of these movements—from institutional care and deinstitutionalization through disability rights, recovery, peer support, and lived experience leadership. 

For More Information and to Register
CLICK HERE

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations: Psychiatry’s Suppression of the Highly Capable

From madinamerica.com
By Alexandra R. Martin, August 27, 2026

The fluorescent lights emitted a low-pitched hum as I paced the hallway of a locked inpatient psychiatric unit in northern Massachusetts. The faces of many other patients reflected the same all-consuming, dreadful emptiness I felt. It was the end of December, and Christmas was fast approaching; some patients reveled in the yuletide celebration while others reacted bitterly, probably because of traumatic experiences of the holiday. The crisp air, kept at the state-mandated minimum of sixty-eight degrees, felt cold against my bare arms.

Colder still was the social worker, Sandra, who had told me hours earlier to lower my expectations for success in life because of my diagnosis.

She spoke to me for no more than two hours over four weeks, but she quickly concluded that it was her place to undercut what remained of my drive in life. As a self-taught software engineer with an engineering degree, I didn’t think my dream of owning my own startup technology business was grandiose or unreasonable. Sandra had told me that “her borderlines” tended to go in and out of the hospital and that I should accept this as a limit on my potential for success. She did not consider that I might recover or become stable in the long term. Instead, she framed inpatient hospitalization as a necessary implication of having a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, a condition characterized in part by extremely rapid and drastic mood swings and a tendency toward self-harm. Read More

I’m A Doctor. This Harmful Reality Of American Health Care Is Becoming Normalized

“It Is One of the Quietest, Most Exhausting Realities in American Health Care.”

From huffpost.com
By Holland Maynie, M.D., August 25, 2026

A week before her dental surgery, one of my patients came to me with a question.

She had been in recovery from opioid addiction for more than a year and a half. When she first entered my treatment program, we saw each other weekly. Over time, through remarkable discipline, those visits became monthly. She had rebuilt her life on buprenorphine treatment. She had gone back to work, reconnected with her church, fought for her children in family court, and regained stability.

She had worked for every bit of it.

Now she was doing something else important: fixing her teeth, which had suffered through years of addiction and neglect. She was scheduled for multiple extractions, and because she was in a medication-assisted treatment program, her dentist wanted to know who would manage her pain afterward.

We talked carefully. We planned ahead. We agreed we would temporarily adjust her medication and manage her pain safely.

We had a plan. Read More

How a Billionaire Shaped Trump’s Homelessness Policy

As Republicans Have Embraced Tough Measures To Clear the Streets, No Group Has Led the Way More Than the Cicero Institute, Founded by the Venture Capitalist Joe Lonsdale.

From nytimes.com
By Ellen Barry and Jason DeParle, August 22, 2026

A team from the Cicero Institute, an upstart think tank, flew to Indiana this year to help make it a crime for homeless people to sleep on the street.

It was their third attempt. Even in the conservative state, previous efforts to ban street camping had failed. Catholic leaders said the measure would hurt the poor, and sheriffs had warned that arrests would crowd the jails. “We’re Hoosiers — we’re better than that,” a Republican state senator, Ron Alting, said last year, urging a more caring approach.

But much had changed since the group, founded by Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire ally of President Trump’s, had made its initial efforts. Mr. Trump had issued an executive order on homelessness that so fully reflected Cicero’s agenda it was hard to tell where the group stopped and White House policy began. The sponsor of the Indiana law was fresh from a Cicero conference, Cicero lobbyists worked the bill, and three Cicero analysts testified that the threat of arrests would push homeless people into treatment for mental illness or addiction. Read More

Five Years After Echo Park Lake, LA Rolls Back Some Anti-Camping Zones

Limited Repeal in One Council District Reopens Debate Over Whether Clearing Encampments Helps People Find Housing

From invisiblepeople.tv

By Stephen Oduntan, September 2, 2026

Five years after Los Angeles police cleared one of the city’s most visible homeless encampments from Echo Park Lake, city leaders are again confronting a question that has followed the homelessness crisis for years: What happens when people are forced to move but have nowhere else to go?

On August 18, the Los Angeles City Council voted 10-3 to remove 12 anti-camping zones in Echo Park, Silver Lake and Hollywood established under Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 41.18.

The law restricts people from sitting, lying, sleeping, or storing belongings in certain public spaces and allows the City Council to designate additional prohibited locations. The 12 zones removed in Council District 13 had been established under former Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who now represents the district, said the restrictions weren’t solving homelessness. Read More 

If you or someone you know is considering suicide or self-harm, there are resources available to provide free and confidential support. Call 988 or the The Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 for LGBTQ young people.

CBHA 2026 Whole System Care Conference
September 30 — _October 2, 2026
The Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa

The 2026 Whole System Health Conference is co-hosted by the California Behavioral Health Association and California Hospital Association. This dynamic conference convenes federal leaders, elected officials, behavioral health agency teams, county representatives, people with lived experience, and statewide advocacy partners for a powerful, solutions focused gathering.

For more information and to register, https://members.calbha.org

Project Return Peer Support Network (PRPSN) Provides certified WRAP training

CASRA member agency Project Return Peer Support Network (PRPSN) is now a licensed Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). PRPSN's Training Institute is now a leading provider of WRAP Seminars across the West Coast, helping individuals and organizations build wellness tools that foster hope, personal responsibility, and empowerment.

 For more information or to schedule a WRAP Seminar, please contact PRPSN's Training Coordinator, Gustavo Limas at glimas@prpsn.org.

“We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.”

Robert Hayden
Poet, Essayist, Educator