Sample Welcome Letter

This is an important opportunity to communicate the unique needs of psychologists and the people we serve to the people with the power to implement change. 

It's important to remember that your Representative and Senator were elected to represent and serve you. It is your right and duty to communicate to them about the issues that are of concern to you. 

Legislators generally have particular areas of expertise and interest, and yours may not know much about health and human services. They may have misconceptions about psychology and mental health issues. When visiting with them, we have three aims:

1. Establish a relationship
2. Educate about psychology
3. Educate about particular areas of concern

The goal is to establish an ongoing relationship where the legislator sees you as a reliable informant, regardless of any partisan issues. It is important that the legislator feels that he/she can trust your information, even if they have a different idea of what should happen with regard to the issue. It is important to be warm and respectful, even if you disagree with a legislator's position. 

Some legislators may not know the difference between a psychologist and psychiatrists. You can ask a non-threatening question to see if they understand our work, and provide information if it seems that they do not. Something like, "we are psychologists, some people get that confused with psychiatrists, but we do different things. We do psychotherapy, psychological testing, teaching, consultation, research on human behavior, administration."

You will only have a few minutes, so get right to the point. "We are here today to talk to you about…" You can ask specifically for what you want. If there are specific bills, give the appropriate number. Bills have letters in front of the numbers that stand for House File or Senate File.  If it is an idea, briefly explain it. After your present, ask if they can support the bill/idea? If they say yes, you can even go so far as to ask if they would be willing to be an author or co-author of a bill. Most often, the discussion doesn't get this far.

If the legislator disagrees with your position, feel free to challenge, or to use Socratic questioning to understand their position. But limit any debate and part agreeably with different opinions. 

It is also useful to use the legislator as a source of information and education. They like to be helpful about ways to pursue issues in government, who might be of help, opinions about how the legislative session is likely to progress, what the opposition thinks of a particular issue. They are often most helpful with the politics of the issue, which may have little to do with its content.

Ask for a picture at the end of the visit and part with a kind handshake.

What Happens on Day on the Hill

1. We will meet at 9:00 at the Ewald offices to get some background on the legislature, get some specific information about how to talk with legislators, spend some time talking about the particular issues we will address in our visits with legislators and review the handout you will give to your legislator.
2. Following this meeting we will go to the Christ Lutheran church, next to the Capitol where many people involved in mental health day will be meeting to discuss the broad outlook of this legislative session with regard to mental health issues. There will be a number of speakers. At the close of the meeting we will hear from several legislators who are involved with health and human services. This meeting goes until about 12:15.
3. After the meeting at the church, people will go to the meetings with their legislators that have been set up. You should have received information about your appointment times and the rooms they are located in. Offices are either in the State Office Building for all Representatives and Republican Senators or located in the Capitol Building if the person is a Democratic Senator. Some of you will have other members of our group in on your meetings because you live in the same district. You can share the discussion with legislators.
4. If you have some free time, you can get something to eat at the Capitol or at the Transportation building. The Rathskellar is the cafeteria in the tunnel level of the Capitol Building. There is a more spacious cafeteria available in the Transportation Building which you can reach by walking through the tunnel from the State Office Building. The Capitol, State Office Building and Transportation Building are connected by an underground tunnel. If it is a nice day, you can also walk outside to get to the buildings.
5. If you have nothing scheduled for a while, feel free to go with a friend to one of their meetings as a support. 
6. If you can stay, the group will meet at 3 in the Transportation Building cafeteria to discuss how meetings have gone. This will be just a short check in. If you are unable to make it to this meeting, please email us to summarize how your meeting went and whether the legislators had questions that someone from MPA should address for them.

Our Issues for Mental Health Day on the Hill

There are many mental health issues being discussed at the Capitol, as you will hear at the church. We have four issues that we will focus on in our discussions:

Extend Duty to Warn to trainees in psychology

• The Duty to Warn potential victims of violence has been in Minnesota law for over 20 years.
• While rarely used, this duty allows the psychologist to breach confidentiality in order to protect the safety of specific individuals from credible threats of violence
• While trainees are bound by the same ethical code as psychologists, current law references only “licensees.”
• A trainee made a good faith report of credible threats to the life of a case worker involved in a patient’s custody dispute. 
• That trainee and her employer were successfully sued for making a good faith report of a credible threat by a patient to harm his children’s case worker.
• No state other than Minnesota has ever had a case like this, and most explicitly cover trainees. 
• We have proposed legislation that corrects the oversight that excluded trainees, while making no substantive change in the existing Duty to Warn law.

2.    Oppose repeal of the sunset of the so-called “Provider Tax.”

• 2% tax on healthcare services.  While it is called a “provider tax,” in reality costs are passed on to the consumer, making this a use tax on healthcare services, levied on the sick, elderly, mentally ill and disabled.
• This tax funds MinnesotaCare, which is vital to the health of many thousands of Minnesotans.  
• MinnesotaCare needs to continue, but should be funded through alternate means that spread the tax more fairly across all Minnesotans, rather than by taxing healthcare services.

3.    23.7% rate increase for Medical Assistance mental health providers left out of the increase in 2007.

• Background-In 2007, a bill passed to give a Medical Assistance rate increase of 23.7% to “critical access providers.” This increase left out mental health professionals in private practice or in mental health centers. We believe we are all critical for access to mental health services, so we feel it is important that this rate increase be extended to all of those mental health professionals who did not receive the increase in 2007. 
• Rationale-Increasing the rate will mean that there are more providers available for people who have Medical Assistance such that people in need of care will have more access. Access to care for MA patients is challenging, especially in rural and busy inner city clinics. This increase will provide more openings to MA patients and thus more access.

Contact information:
[Names, phone numbers]