PLAN supplements the efforts of families that are able to provide care, and fills in for these families when they can no longer do so.

PLAN provides respite services, guidance, colleagueship, and a myriad of social activities that support care-givers and break down the isolation of mentally ill individuals. Most importantly, we are (and will be) there to provide quality care, tailored to the needs of specific individuals, to both augment the efforts of the primary care-giver and continue their efforts when they are no longer able to provide care.

PLAN was founded by people wanting to ensure that the needs of the seriously mentally ill in Central Texas are met when their current care-givers can no longer fulfill that role, whether because of death, disability, or relocation. We want to ensure a continuity of quality care, reaching the medical, financial, social, and recreational needs of the consumers of mental health services.

PLAN seeks to provide reassurance and peace of mind to those currently providing care and oversight for mentally ill persons, to enable them to know, confidentially, that their loved one will continue to receive the care and attention they need.

Today, about 60% of individuals with a severe mental illness live with their families. Most of the remaining 40% receive care and attention from family members, while living somewhere else. Thus, whether they live with a parent/family member or not, people with mental illness are very dependent on their care-giving relatives.

Family members caring for a mentally ill loved one provide a wide range of essential services, including: overseeing treatment and medication; providing for the consumer financially, and keeping an eye on budgeting and spending. They also provide social activities, transportation, and advice; ensure that medication is taken as prescribed and that doctors are seen as needed; and act as the consumer's advocate in dealing with the public. It is usually the family member that opens the pathway for government benefits, and makes sure that these benefits continue to flow. Of course, dedicated care-givers, while doing all of this, also work tirelessly to ensure both that their loved stays on the road to recovery, and are cared for while doing so.

Many of the care-givers in these families are elderly. At some point, through death, disability, or simple relocation, they will not be able to continue providing the care they now lovingly (and tenaciously) provide. Indeed, over a ten year period, half of the people living with a serious mental illness will lose the support of their care-giving family member.

While the loss of a parent or other family member is usually upsetting, it can be devastating to someone living with a mental illness. While great strides have been made in treating mental illness, very few people suffering from a neurobiological disorder will ever be fully independent. They need caring people to look after them, and that need shall continue, very likely indefinitely.

Without long-term, careful planning, when a long-time caregiver is gone, many things can happen, and most of them are bad. The person with a mental illness may, if they get care at all, be relegated to the care of someone who does not know their history, yet alone their preferences and hopes for the future. Too often, this results in self-medication, relapses, institutionalization, living in sub-standard housing, homelessness, and even incarceration.

PLAN exists to help families avoid these pitfalls, providing assurance that the family member needing care will have it for as long as (s)he they need it, that the wishes of the individual and their families are adhered to, and that, to the greatest extent possible, the caring concern provided by a person's family continues.