The CAFÉ TA Center is a program of The Family Café, a cross-disability organization that has been connecting individuals with information, training and resources for more than twelve years. The Center is supported by SAMHSA to operate one of its five national technical assistance centers; providing technical assistance, training, and resources that facilitate the restructuring of the mental health system through effective consumer directed approaches for adults with serious mental illnesses across the country.
CAFE TAC is here to provide mental health consumers and their grass-roots organizations with information, training, networking opportunities and support as they seek to advocate for themselves and transform the mental health system of care to allow for and encourage genuine consumer involvement and peer leadership. We believe that better outcomes among Americans with serious mental illness will result from putting consumers with real world experience at the center of the mental health system of care, and we are here to provide the tools and expertise to make that happen.
Our approach is embodied in the acronym that gives our TA Center its name: Collaboration, Advocacy, Friendship and Empowerment.
The project utilizes a peer driven approach that is founded upon strategies and interventions consistent with self-determination and recovery models and guided by expert consultants and national technical assistance professionals. The CAFÉ TA Center target areas includes transition facilitation; building a repository of information, training, tools, and resources that promote the successful hiring and support of peer specialists; and collecting resources and training that will ensure consumer leaders contribute to the system’s capacity to make adjustments at every level to ensure a responsive system of care. This project serves consumer run organizations, consumer assisted organizations, grass-roots consumer advocates, consumer directed programs, consumer leaders, and their partners.
