Can You Guess Whose Carpet I want? Our Visit to the US Senate

Drs. Glowinski and Harvey taking in the US Capitol

Kirby Harvey, Rachel Metheny -two of the WU CAP program 1st year fellows- and I just had an enriching experience visiting together the US capitol to advocate for child mental health in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Our activities were organized superbly by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent  Psychiatry: http://www.aacap.org/cs/advocacy

The AACAP staff had prepared packages for each advocacy participant including a schedule of appointments with the staff of Congress members or, occasionally, with Representatives themselves. For our Missouri delegation, itineraries included meetings with staff from the offices of our two current MO senators. Our packages included as well such background information as bios of elected officials, a freshly updated list of Congress representatives, and a consensus Bill of Rights for Children with Mental Health Disorders and their Families: http://www.aacap.org/galleries/govtaffairs/a_bill_of_rights_for_children_with_mental_health_disorders_and_their_families_2012.pdf
Packages for each Representative's office were also handed out to our little group including key statistics (e.g., about youth suicide) and work force shortage issues (e.g., maps representing the very far from ideal density of child psychiatrists across the US and specifically in Missouri).

Our advocacy meetings with well informed, bright and very young staffers were quite educational for our two fellows, who each took on enthusiastically and very competently the task of presenting information at our scheduled meetings. I had warned my trainees that they might be astounded by the extreme youth of highly influential staffers. However, Rachel and Kirby had to experience it to finally believe me...

The highlights of our visit? Well, we did see the back of Senator Claire McCaskill, had an anthropologically informative lunch in one of the Senate's basement cafeteria, and I personally drooled over one of the carpets I glanced in Senator McCain's office. We will be back!

Till Later,

Anne