The Symposium for Salt Lake County Law Enforcement, Legal, and Mental Health Workers (Sept. 24)

Since April/May, our coalition (Utah Shattering Silence Coalition) has been working with the Salt Lake DA's office to organize and support this workshop.  I didn't really do much pre-work other than brainstorming and doing an interview which was cut down to 5 minutes and shown as one of the videos on the day of the conference.

I had to provide a photo for our bios as I was also one of the presenters at the conference.  We took several--and we ended up using my Facebook profile which has Gary and I which I liked better.  But for future generations--here is a photo of me at 70 years old---NOT to be used for a funeral program in the future, by the way. 

The conference was held in Salt Lake at the DA's office so everyone had to go through a metal detector to enter the venue.  (One psychiatrist who was coming to the office as an expert witness ended up accidently thinking he had to register at our desk as well to get into the offices of the attorney he was meeting with. Oops.) 

I ran the registration table for the conference (and 5:50 is way too early for me to get up these days.)

My presentation was focused on finding help for Ben when he first got ill and some of our adventures in that process.  I have included the script although I didn't read it when I present it.  It is fairly close to what I shared.  People were very complimentary so that was good.  I didn't realize that they were going to play my video in a group of three as we transitioned from lunch into my presentation and so mine was shown right before I spoke.  I also didn't know what part of my 30 minutes interview was going to be shown at the conference.  As it turned out, it focused most on our personal story and experiences which was a nice lead in for my remarks, but also allowed me to shorten a few things in my remarks.  (And I am glad that I didn't wear the same shirt in the interview for the workshop.  That would have felt a bit awkward.  :) )

We ended up having about 110 people register for in person (probably about 90 attended and an amazing 180 people online.  Hopefully it will start some conversations and move things in a better direction in both Salt Lake County and in the state.

Glad to have it done and I don't think it could have gone any better. (Even the lunch menu was awesome.) Sim Gill, the SL DA, is hoping to do a town hall meeting next spring to continue this conversation.  Exciting stuff----

Our next big event is a movie screening of "Nobody Likes Crazy People" in December, but we have lots of work to do before then preparing for the upcoming legislative session in the spring.