Elwyn - Recovery

Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Recovery

Elwyn was founded on the principle that everyone has the capacity to grow and learn. More than 155 years later, we remain committed to that same tenet of dignity and respect by supporting psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery. To that end, Behavioral Health Services relies on evidence-based practices and approaches that are proven to support individual rehabilitation and recovery. Thus, we direct our efforts to increasing the quality of individual’s lives by helping to develop personal support networks and participation in the community.

Our services are integrated and accessible and focus on remediation, rehabilitation, education, and empowerment. All individuals and their families are encouraged to participate in decisions about their treatment and the services they receive.

Integration of Psychiatric Rehabilitation & Recovery Principles

Early in 2004, Elwyn established a Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Recovery Workgroup. The workgroup spent two years convening, researching, and visiting nationally recognized programs, including Anthony’s Boston Program, Thresholds in Chicago, Fairweather Lodge in Erie and Minneapolis, Peer Specialist Program in Georgia, and START in San Diego. We have been in contact with experts in the field across the country including Texas, California, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Oregon.

Elwyn has offered staff training in psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery through Drexel University Behavioral Healthcare Education, the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, and The Copeland Center. Elwyn developed a training plan for the behavioral health teams to follow. The plan is designed so that each team member will acquire an overview of psychiatric rehabilitation while preparing them for the transition to a recovery oriented system. More specifically, the plan includes the following:

Elwyn hosted two Orientations to Psychiatric Rehabilitation.
Elwyn hosted Mary Ellen Copeland to present a six-hour WRAP Training.
Persons served participated in recovery orientations through consumer forums, community meetings and workshops offered by the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Elwyn hosted a workshop on Motivational Interviewing.
Elwyn has sponsored a Recovery Conference organized by Welcome House and the Clubhouse Coalition.

Elwyn participated in an exciting research project with Ed Casper, Ph.D. from the Drexel University College of Medicine. Entitled, A Formulative Evaluation of Recovery Oriented Curriculum, the project is designed to determine the knowledge of ‘recovery-oriented’ principles and practices of the agency, staff and people we serve.

Elwyn’s movement towards all programming becoming psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery focused are based on national trends and directives. There is a growing body of research identifying effective treatments, services and approaches that work and support recovery.

Elwyn fully endorses, trains staff in, and applies to its mental health operations, the Principles of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, as developed by the United States Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association:

Ultimate psychiatric rehabilitation goals are recovery, reestablishment of normal roles in the community, development of a personal support network and increased quality of life.
All people have the capacity to learn and grow.
People have the right to direct their own affairs related to psychiatric disability including the services they receive.
All people are to be treated with respect, dignity, and with conscious and consistent effort to eliminate any type of labeling or discrimination including that based on disabling condition.
Psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners recognize and appreciate culture and/or ethnicity as a source of strength and enrichment, which play an important role in recovery.
Interventions built on strengths and facilitate the process of recovery and reintegration into community life.
Services needs to be integrated, coordinated, accessible and available as long as needed.
Services including assessments are designed to address each person’s unique needs consistent with individual cultural values and norms.
Services are normalized, community centered ad encompass the whole life of the person.
Practitioners actively encourage and support the person’s involvement in normal community activities such as school and work throughout the rehabilitation process.
The involvement and partnership of the person and family members is essential to effective services including service operation, evaluation, and governance.
Practitioners constantly strive to improve services.

For recovery to take place, the culture of mental health care must shift to a culture that is based on self-determination, empowering relationships, and full participation of persons served. A recovery-oriented mental health system embraces the following values:

Self-determination
Empowering relationships
Meaningful roles in society
Eliminating stigma and discrimination

The organization and management of Elwyn’s psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery based programs are visible through dedication, commitment, and practice of the highest standards of care and professional ethics. Management approaches staff as a team where their input is heard, understood and respected. The team’s approach to persons served is collaborative with the expectation that everyone is involved and working together.

Below is a listing of Elwyn’s current programs that are based on the psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery philosophies. These programs emphasize remediation, rehabilitation, education, and empowerment for persons served. A program that sees recovery as a possibility is structured differently than traditional services and continuously maintains the hope of recovery.

Welcome House, located in Upper Darby, PA is a nationally recognized clubhouse that serves adults in recovery from mental illness and those with co-occurring disorders. Welcome House is a member of the Pennsylvania Clubhouse Coalition and is certified by the International Center for Clubhouse Development. Elwyn is a member of United States Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association USPRA. The staff provides services that helps the member to accept responsibility for their own recovery. Staff and members alike are responsible for the activities and programming. Members in all stages of their mental health recovery participate based on their current status.

Natale Residential Treatment Facility and Crisis Residential Program at Natale, are designed for adults with a psychiatric diagnosis who need a structured sub-acute environment for stabilization and rehabilitation. The programs offer hospital diversion, stabilization, and step-down services to people experiencing acute emotional crises. The program can also help individuals shorten their length of stay in a hospital by providing a transition from inpatient to community treatment.

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), located in Allentown, PA, is an evidence-based team treatment approach designed to provide comprehensive, community-based psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation, and support to persons with serious and persistent mental illness such as schizophrenia. Persons served by ACT often have co-existing problems such as homelessness, substance abuse problems, or involvement with the judicial system.

New Visions: Traditional programs dictated that everyone was to be served in a designated site and at designated times and where the content of services was restricted according to established guidelines.

New Visions is the culmination of efforts to create a different type of program. New Visions is a recovery oriented, community integrated and treatment based network of care where originality is valued, and offering many choices and individualized approaches to the recovery process is the expectation. Educational interventions on site and in the community provide creative, culturally rich and thoughtful, safe growth for each participant. New Visions is a place where people come to learn how to recover, work and build social supports that lead to in-community opportunities. Employment is be prized and people are supported in their efforts to secure gainful employment, educated in the ways to maintain their benefits and be supported when they choose to reduce their dependence on these benefits.

New Visions encompasses a “living- learning” philosophy, modeled similar to a “community college” that offers various tracts and levels of proficiency. New Visions offers three tracts for individuals: Site Based Education and Training, Community Integration and Supported Employment. Certified Peer Specialists are people with a mental illness, helpful others in their recovery from mental illness and they are vital to New Visions. The individual have the option of participating in one service or they can choose to participate in any combination of the three tracts.

Participant movement into the community is the primary goal of NewVisions. Connections to families, friends, education and employment are emphasized. The walls of traditional programs are eliminated with the assistance of Certified Peer Specialist who have special training and use their own recovery experience to support participant change.

Admission Criteria:

1. Individuals 18 years or older and is in recovery form a mental illness including schizophrenia, major mood disorder, Psychotic disorder NOS, schizoaffective disorder or borderline personality disorder. Other mental health diagnosis may be reviewed and approved by the BHMCO on an exception basis.

2. The person is a resident of Philadelphia, with Medical Assistance /CBH coverage

3. May have co-occurring substance abuse issue

4. May have secondary developmental disabilities

5. Able to communicate and benefit from a blended site and community focused program

6. Able to travel independently or learn how to travel independently.

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