About Keep The Promise
KTP: ADVOCATING FOR COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH SOLUTIONS SINCE 1999!
Keep the Promise Coalition is dedicated to advocating for a comprehensive, community mental health system for adults, children and families in Connecticut. Won’t you join us?
The KEEP THE PROMISE Coalition was formed in 1999 after the closure of two large adult state psychiatric hospitals when people living with mental illness, family members, providers and advocates met to discuss and address the mental health crisis in Connecticut.
The state’s promise to build a comprehensive, community mental health system in CT has not been kept, forcing many children and adults with mental illness into expensive settings such as emergency rooms, jails/prisons, homelessness and institutional care, some out-of-state. At the same time, individuals families with private insurance often cannot get the mental health care they need for themselves/their children.
In July 2000, the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Mental Health issued a report documenting both the crisis and recommended solutions.
Spending money smarter on a system of care focused on preventative, early intervention, flexible, individualized, recovery/resiliency-oriented and evidence-based and promising practice services and supports, including housing, is proven to save lives and money!
Chairs of Keep The Promise Coalition
Jan VanTassel, Esq. –
Jan VanTassel, who has been CLRP’s Executive Director since 1998, has been a public interest attorney for nearly thirty years. A 1977 graduate of Suffolk University Law School in Boston, she spent a year as a VISTA volunteer in Idaho before moving to Connecticut to work with legal services doing policy advocacy work at the State Capitol. She had a three year hiatus in New Mexico, where she worked at the Institute of Public Law, and spent six very long years managing the Alternate Care Unit (community services) of DSS, before she was able to return to legal services as the Executive Director of the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut.
While at LARCC, Jan founded the Connecticut Alliance for Basic Human Needs and was a leading activist on public benefits, elder and disability issues. Jan is President of the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund as well as the ADA Coalition of Connecticut, and serves on the Board of the United Labor Agency and the Advisory Board of the Office of Victim Services and is a member of the CT Bar Association’s House of Delegates. Jan also has a master’s degree in History from Tufts University and has had several articles published.
