Supportive Housing Services are designed to provide people who have been diagnosed as living with a mental disorder the opportunity to live in the community in various housing settings where mobile support services are provided as needed.
The goals of CSPNJ sponsored supportive housing include:
- Access and maintain a secure, safe environment in the community of one’s choice
- Enhanced awareness of and involvement in mental health care and community integration
- Prevent unnecessary psychiatric hospitalizations and homelessness
- Maximize independence
- Improved quality of life
Support Services Target Population
The target population is very low-income adults living with mental illness who are capable of living in independent housing, with access to a range of flexible support services. Preference is offered to persons who have a history of psychiatric hospitalization and/or are at-risk for hospitalization, those referred from Division of Mental Health Services and Addiction Services (DMHAS) hospitals, individuals living at licensed residential programs who are ready to move to independent housing, and those who are homeless and/or at risk for homelessness.
Vision and Values of Support Services
To create an environment of hope that embraces the concept of wellness and recovery from mental illness. To integrate this concept in all aspects of daily operations and service delivery we:
- Use person-first language. We eliminate of the use of all labeling, prejudicial and judgmental language from our interactions.
- Consciously and persistently use a strengths-based perspective with a focus on well-considered choice, empowerment, self-advocacy, and recognition of service participants as a person first.
- Assist people in recovery to identify a goal in their environment of choice and actively work with them to achieve it. We see recovery as a personal journey, and we assist people as they pursue their journeys.
- Promote the concept of independence, with recognition that this will be different for each individual at different times while recognizing that we are all interdependent. We work with people in recovery ‘where they are at’ as a starting point and not where we think they should be.
- Recognize that our relationships with the people we serve and with each other are necessary to successfully implement CSPNJ’s mission and achieve our vision.
- Build and maintain an “intentional community” that promotes inclusion, interdependence and challenges members to grow in a supportive environment
Our entire agency, and our Supportive Housing teams in particular, are built around the practice of Psychiatric Rehabilitation.
All Supportive Housing workers are required to be or be in the process of becoming a Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner (CPRP).
We attempt to prioritize hire persons pursuing their own psychiatric recoveries, a commitment across the agency. We embrace the US Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association's (USPRA) Core Principles and Values of Psychiatric Rehabilitation. In accordance with principle #7, "...all individuals have the right to make their own decisions, including decisions about the types of supports and services they receive," we ensure that our services are open to people who choose not to use mental health treatment, choose to control all of their own funds, or any other choice they make of their own free will.
As Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioners, we expect that most of the people we serve are employed or are in the process of becoming employed. Every regional Supportive Housing team has a full-time employment specialist, working in accordance with the Individual Placement and Support service model (www.dartmouth.edu/~ips/).