Consumer Centered Family Consultation: New York State's Recent Efforts to Include Families and Consumers as Partners in Recovery

Partnering with families while also ensuring that the consumer is at the center of all decisions is a profound challenge for practitioners who work with adults with severe and persistent mental illnesses. Consumer centered family consultation (CCFC) is a brief, education-based engagement and consultation service designed to promote collaboration among adult consumers of mental health services, members of their family or social network, and service providers to support each consumer's recovery. In the present article, we describe the CCFC model and its development, with an emphasis on strategies to engage and include both consumers and family members as equal partners. We also provide a brief overview of the Family Institute for Education, Practice and Research's CCFC training and implementation activities to date in New York State. We highlight findings from preliminary program evaluations as well as lessons learned from helping clinicians conduct CCFCs at more than 50 agencies.