By MACKENZIE ISSLER
GREENFIELD — When Susan Howell was 23 years old, she was living in the “back ward” of a Texas state hospital, where she felt “depressed and lifeless.”
Howell’s mother came to visit one day and took her out of the hospital for what she thought was a short outing. Howell thought they were going to grab a burger nearby, but her mother drove her five hours to her home in Texas. Outside, there was a big U-Haul truck and her mother told her they were going to Massachusetts, where there were better mental health services.
Howell’s relationship with her mother had always been rocky. She had grown up in foster care homes. But, Howell will never forget her mother’s decision to get her out of Texas. “It was the best thing she ever did for me.” “I was in deep trouble.”
This was in 1983. After arriving in Massachusetts, Howell had a short stint in the now shuttered Northampton State Hospital. After it closed, she started attending a day mental health program in Greenfield. When that program also closed its doors, she joined the Green River House, also in Greenfield.
The Green River House, located at 37 Franklin St., is a Clinical Support Options day program for people with mental illnesses and its main focus is securing employment for its members. It is one of 33 “clubhouses” statewide, which serve residents who have serious mental illnesses. It sees about 40 people each day and has about 160 active members.
The staff at the Green River House helped Howell, now 51, get a job, and now she works at Clinical Support Options as a peer advocate. She helps people “help themselves,” working at the drop-in center at One Arch Place. “It makes me feel great … helping taking care of people.”
Howell said the clubhouse’s staff often go above and beyond their job duties. “If someone needs something, (the staff) will take care of it … we feel cared for here.”
Without the Green River House, she feels she would never be where she is today and that is the consensus among many of the program’s current members. But, Gov. Deval Patrick has proposed a $3 million budget cut next year, which would fall on the shoulders of clubhouses statewide, which is threatening the sustainability and existence of the local programs next year.
Reva Stein, executive director of the Massachusetts Clubhouse Coalition, said the governor’s budget includes a $3 million reduction to the state Department of Mental Health’s “adult community mental health services” account, which includes clubhouse services.
Stein said it is the DMH commissioner’s plan to cut $3 million from the clubhouses, if that cut is enacted. She said Commissioner Barbara Leadholm presented her plan to cut clubhouses in front of the state Ways and Means Committee on Friday.
‘The impact will be devastating’
Clinical Support Options operates the Green River House and the Quabbin House in Orange, both clubhouses. The two clubhouses have an annual budget of about $550,000 from the state Department of Mental Health. The governor’s proposal is the first step in the budget process for next year and the Legislature still has to make its proposals and come up with a budget to send to the governor’s desk. But, the governor’s proposed cuts, if enacted, could cause possible closures of clubhouses or deep program cuts.
Richard Nadolski, who is the contracts manager for the two clubhouses, said, if the cuts stuck, it would be up to DMH to decide how the cuts would be distributed. He said, if the department took the $3 million and divided it evenly among all of the clubhouses, this would mean a cut of $90,000 to each clubhouse. For CSO, this would mean a loss of about $180,000 for the operation of its two clubhouses. “We couldn’t very easily sustain that.”
He said DMH could also decide to close some clubhouses and leave others untouched.
Any cuts would affect services, he said. He said the two local clubhouses haven’t received increases to its annual budget for at least 15 years and that clubhouses statewide have been operating on small deficits or a very thin margin. About 75 to 80 percent of the clubhouses budgets are staff salaries, so “they would have to take a whack,” if the cuts passed, he said. The clubhouses employ seven people in Greenfield, 4½ in Orange, and Nadolski.
Nadolski has been working at the Green River House since its inception in 1988, so he is no stranger to the threat of budget cuts. “Certainly, we have been through this several times; fortunately, our worst fears have never been realized.”
“We hope in this case here that our worst fears won’t be realized,” he said. “The impact will be devastating for lots of folks.”
The Green River House is partnered with about four local employers, which have jobs slots for its members and has had up to 12 partners. Nadolski said the program is now working to expand its employment program and get more partners. Staff help members find “transitional employment,” where they stay at a job for six months to a year. If a member has to call out sick from his or her job, a staffer who is trained in that job will fill in.
The governor proposed his cuts to close a projected $1.2 billion short fall next year, according to the Massachusetts Clubhouse Coalition.
“This cut, which represents 17 percent for the funding for clubhouse recovery centers statewide, poses a serious threat to thousands of people who rely on these services for their well-being,” said Stein.
The clubhouses provide a welcoming place to come to during the day and assistance in gaining jobs, education, housing, peer support, recovery supports and other services “that are saving lives and offering hope to hose who are working to recover from what can be a devastating disability.”
According to a study from MMA, clubhouse members earned $13.2 million working for local businesses in fiscal year 2009. “Our members are helping to support our struggling economy while working to rebuild their lives,” said Stein. “This cut will be costly and will hurt our communities, as well as those with mental illness and their families.”
Other local members react
Last March, 51-year-old Jeffrey Blais tried to kill himself after “things had gotten so bad and so many things had happened all at once,” including being evicted from the apartment he lived in with his wife of 30 years in Greenfield.
“Everything came together all at once … I was really at the point where I couldn’t cope and was ready to toss everything in.”
After his attempted suicide, Blais was hospitalized at Baystate Franklin Medical Center and then was in a partial hospitalization program. After that ended, Blais joined the clubhouse and for the past year has lived in a motel in Shelburne Falls with his wife. “When I re-entered the general public, it was the clubhouse that helped me most of all,” he said. “For the last three years, I had been a virtual shut-in. The Green River Clubhouse gave me a chance to socialize with other people. Now I tutor computers to anyone who needs help and am looking for work after 11 years of depression over living with MS.”
“I became a part of a community,” he said. “I started helping other people and it helped me get past my own problems.”
His first reaction to the proposed cuts — “I lost a little hope and I’m worried I will be in the same situation, a shut-in with no place to go.” Without the clubhouse, he thinks he would “sink into a really bad depression and probably would never come out of (his) room.”
Before coming to the clubhouse, he wouldn’t let anyone take his picture, even family. But, recently, he volunteered to be part of a picture being taken. “It was a really big breakthrough … I was doing something I never would do.” Blais spends five days a week at the clubhouse. He is picked up at the motel around 8 a.m. and returns around 4:30 p.m.
Many are afraid that if the program is cut, more people will end up in the hospital, which they say is much more costly than to fund a program like the Green River House.
Sixty-five-year-old Diana Chase applied to become a member of the Green River House 19 years ago. Just after she applied, she became homeless and lived in a local shelter for about six months. She has been going to the clubhouse on Franklin Street ever since and volunteers there as a receptionist.
Chase admitted that her family has had a hard time understanding her mental illness and have turned away. But, she said the other members and staff have become her family now.
Being a member at the clubhouse has allowed her to feel the sense of accomplishment and has kept her from being isolated, especially since she lives alone. Because of the clubhouse, she has been able to work several part-time jobs, but she is not working now.
Chase, like many, feels that more people will end up in hospitals and the jail, if the program is closed or suffers deep cuts. She said the isolation has many negative effects, including making people less mobile and less proactive in treating and dealing with their illnesses.
“I feel depressed and hopeless,” she said, about the proposed cuts.
“My social life would dwindle and I would have no means of transportation for groceries and clothing shopping,” she said.
Each Friday, staff take the members grocery shopping to local stores and about once or twice each month they go to Holyoke or Hinsdale, N.H. to a mall or Walmart.
“Whenever I have a rough time, I come here,” said Deborah Carliell, 59, of Greenfield.
Carliell, who suffers from minor depression, started going to the Greenfield clubhouse after her son died in April 2009. Two years before, she became homeless and lived in the emergency shelter in Greenfield.
She lived in the shelter for three months and then was moved into a ServiceNet housing, where she lived with about five other people. One of the women that she lived with went to the Green River House, and after a year of trying to convince her to go, Carliell decided to go.
Her son had just died, and when she went to the clubhouse, she met a staffer whose sister had died. “We bonded right away; we became family.”
She said the clubhouse staff helped her find a job at ServiceNet, where she now works as a receptionist. On May 1, 2009, she moved into her own apartment in Leyden Woods.
Staff have taken her to visit family members, like when her son was in the hospital. They also will be taking her to a doctor’s appointment, since she doesn’t have a car.
“This is like my family,” she said. “They have helped me through some major issues.”
“If it hadn’t been for this place, I don’t know if I would have come as far as I have.”
No comments:
Post a Comment