KyPRA annual banquet reviews year, sets course for next and recognizes Lou Kurtz for Career Achievement

"Looking back over the past two years," Bruce Scott, President of KyPRA, told attendees at the association's annual banquet that "we have the infrastructure in place to advance the practice of psychiatric rehabilitation" among practitioners, insurers, and policy-makers in Kentucky.

KyPRA incorporated and achieved recognition as a nonprofit "trade group" able to lobby last year, and over the past two years has built its communications capabilities for organizing and training psych rehab practitioners; we have about 180 people on our mailing list. We successfully advocated for evidence-based services for residents of Personal Care institutions and for use of the psych rehab model in new regulations implementing the Interim Settlement Agreement and the Medicaid State Plan Amendment.

The desire to advance builds on a consensus apparent from our strategic planning session last November that psych rehab and the value of the CPRP were worth advancing, now. Bruce outlined several initiatives that the board was actively exploring related to leadership development, policy advocacy, and continuing education for CPRPs. 

The banquet also recognized Lou Kurtz, the associate director of the Kentucky Division of Behavioral Health, for his work for over twenty years to stand up integrated housing, supported employment, assertive community treatment, and other Evidence-Based Practices. Lou is moving from the Department's offices in Frankfort to a newly-established center at Eastern Kentucky University that will develop quality aspects of mental health EBP implementation such as fidelity reviews.