Collective Citizenship in Action: Peer to Peer Community Building Date: June 3, 2020 @ 2:00 pm | Virtual Training Webinar Presenters: Billy Bromage, Community Organizer Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health; Co-chair, Structural Competency Curriculum Committee Yale Department of Psychiatry & Bridgett Williamson, Co-Director Citizens Project in New Haven, CT Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health
Housekeeping Information Participant microphones will be If you have questions about the muted at entry – please use the topic during the webinar, please chat box if you have questions or use the chat box. technical difficulties. This session is being recorded and it will be available on the If you have questions after Information about MHTTC website within 24 hours this session, please e-mail: CEUs will be sent in a of the close of this newengland@mhttcnetwork.org. follow-up e-mail presentation.
OUR TEAM • Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health in partnership with: • C4 Innovations • Harvard University Department of Psychiatry • Center for Educational Improvement
Mission To use evidence-based means to disseminate evidence-based practices across the New New England England region. MHTTC Area of Focus Recovery-Oriented Practices, including Recovery Support Services, within the Context of Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care.
To ensure the responsiveness of our work, we will actively develop and maintain a network of government officials, policy makers, system leaders, administrators, community stakeholders, providers, researchers, youth and adults, and family members from each of the six states to guide the New England Ensuring MHTTC’s activities. Inclusion New England MHTTC, 2020
New England MHTTC, 2020
Meet our Presenters Billy Bromage received his Master’s in Social Work degree, with a concentration in community organization, from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work in 2012. He has been working in the fields of community mental health and food assistance in New Haven, CT for over 15 years. He has been at the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health since 2011. He works as a community organizer, developing projects with grassroots leaders, people with mental illnesses, DMHAS- funded programs, other nonprofit organizations, city and Billy Bromage state government officials, and other civic leaders to Community Organizer Yale Program for Recovery promote mental health and inclusion in New Haven and Community Health; Co- neighborhoods. As a central component of this work, he chair, Structural has also supported and helped to develop coalitions to Competency Curriculum Committee sustain community-level inclusion and food security Yale Department of initiatives. He has served as a Co-chair of the Structural Psychiatry Competency Curriculum Committee in the Yale Department of Psychiatry since 2015.
Meet our Presenters Bridgett Williamson is currently the Co-Director of the Citizens Project in New Haven, CT, for Yale’s Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH). She has worked in the field of Peer Support Services for approximately 11 years. Her work began as a peer mentor for Columbus House, Inc. in New Haven, CT. She has been with PRCH since 2007, starting first as a casual employee to becoming a Research Assistant in 2013. Her contribution to the work of citizens-oriented care, community organizing, and peer support has influenced the field Bridgett Williamson nationally and internationally. Bridgett has presented in Co-Director Montreal and Glasgow. According to Bridgett, “I love my Citizens Project in New Haven, CT work, I can be myself. I don’t have to pretend. When I’m Yale Program for Recovery working with my peers, I meet them where they’re at. I and Community Health know that I’m not always going to connect with people right away, but in time, once they see that I’m not going anywhere, the walls come down.”
What We • Foundations of collective citizenship framework Hope to Cover • Ideas for putting collective citizenship into action, including a specific initiative in New Haven, CT
What are our Goals • Review history and framework of recovering citizenship and collective citizenship • Describe FACE and the work they do • Explain how FACE operationalize the collective citizenship framework • Discuss the role FACE plays during COVID-19 • Provide a platform to engage webinar participants in discussion about how collective citizenship might work in their organizations
Citizenship: Background and Overview • Supporting people in having a full life in the community • Strong connection to the 5R’s • Rights • Responsibilities • Roles • Resources • Relationships • …and Belonging • Citizens Project has been main intervention
Recovery and Citizenship… Recovering Citizenship (Rowe & Davidson, 2016) Adapting Fear of risk Recovery has “Two path” “Do it now” “Systems of Recovery: environment among paid less citizenship approach, care are not “living one’s and still practitioners attention to approaches of aligned with equipped to life as best providing (e.g., clients the societal individual Housing First support and fully as supports aiming to conditions in support and and people’s one can in the high) which the community Supported valued face of a process change Employment community mental illness happens, like membership that won’t go poverty and and away” racism participation” Inspired by People will make Disability Rights their choices movement anyway
Collective • Response to individualizing tendency of Citizenship – mental health service systems As applied to • Power rests within the group, rather than Mental being possessed or portioned out by a paid Health professional Systems • Professionals can play important roles (Quinn, as common-cause partners, not as designated leaders Bromage & • A shift in power from social service Rowe, 2019) providers to community members with lived experience of marginalization has to occur • Does not replace individual’s personal rights, but rather provides relationships, mutual support to act collectively to secure rights
Focus Act Connect Everyday (FACE): How we started • Started in April 2015 at social club, general facilitated discussion • Small groups at first – decided to move off site into community, outside of mental health service system • Intentionally outside of the system: Remember: shift in power from social service providers to community members with lived experience • Attended by people in recovery, staff, family members, community at large, but not specifically focused on mental illness • Peer role in recruiting and supporting members
• Group is “leaderless” in decision-making • Leads to slow, sometimes wandering group-building process – definitely not FACE: linear Role of the • Who has the answers? “Expert” o Group members set agenda together at each meeting o We create space for everyone to be the expert on their own community experiences o Flexible depending on situation • Staff roles: convener, reminder, connector to community assets and networks, peer support o …and sometimes expert, but not the expert
Poll Question Can a collective citizenship initiative like FACE exist within the mental heath system? Why or why not?
FACE: What we do in the community • Began partnering with existing initiatives, rather than starting our own thing • We pay attention to how we enter communities • Rely on community as asset, don’t recreate resources • We define our role within that context • Mutual aid and support: We look after each other and the community at large • Community murals • Annual grocery packing • Present regularly at IRCC symposium o Teaching mental health professionals, in line with power shifting • Core members of Witnesses to Hunger New Haven
Research related to FACE • 15 interviews with FACE members in 2017 • Findings: 1. Decorating a home together o Feeling comfortable and accepted o Belonging 2. FACE is a bridge o Venue for learning about community o Members are compelled to act in community 3. More connected and more implicated o Experiences as valuable rather than marginalizing o Opportunity to give back
FACE in the time of COVID-19 • Peer to peer relationships not mediated by service system o More easily maintained when system is stressed • Oriented to mutual aid o Both mental/emotional well-being and community resources o Not focused on mental health treatment • Giving back o Something to break up loneliness o Collective approach: Partnership with Witnesses to Hunger
Questions and Discussion
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