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Philosophy:
 Designed Care

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Service Culture
Structure: Integrating Services

 

The Village's Designed Care Tree

(Branch)
Environment: High Risk/High Support

 

  • No one can grow and learn without taking risks and experiencing failure. At the Village failure is perceived as a chance for learning and personal growth rather than as a defeat.

 

  • People frequently fail multiple times before they succeed. Multiple attempts often strengthen eventual successes.

 

  • Risk is difficult for everyone; it is easier to play it safe.
  1. Members are frightened of
    failing because no one likes
    to fail.
  2. Family members worry that
    failing might trigger the self-
    destructive or aggressive
    behaviors a member has
    shown in the past.
  3. Staff wants to avoid member
    crises and prevent
    decompensation.

 
  • Members are encouraged to take risks such as living independently for the first time, applying for a job, enrolling in a college class or asking someone out on a date.
  • Risk is only acceptable in a high support environment.

  • High support must be consistent, available and given willingly. A responsive, caring staff can enhance the possibility of success as well as help construct a plan to reduce potential disasters
  • High support means that communication among staff, members and families is frequent, easy and flows in all directions.
  • Staff and other member supporters need to stand by members (not abandon them) as they face the natural consequences of their actions. An important feature of high support is that it does not eliminate natural consequences or protect members from their own bad decisions.
  • High Support helps members recover from a failure, reflect on their experience and figure out what they might do differently next time. High support always assumes there will be a next time.
  • Employment Services are the cornerstone of a high risk/high support environment.
 
  1. Work is the single most normalizing, de-stigmatizing activity for persons with psychiatric disabilities. Because work is so often equated with "being normal", working has offers great meaning and therefore much risk associated with it for members.
  2. Work provides members with internal motivation for managing symptoms, offers tangible results and gives worker assurances of being needed.
  3. Work has a major impact on a member’s self-concept and identity—the member is a worker, not patient.
  4. In a high support/high risk environment, all members are encouraged to try and to maintain employment.
  5. At the Village, learning about employment takes place in real settings "in situ" rather than in artificial settings "in vitro" such as classrooms or therapy groups. Emphasis is on "role-doing" rather than "role-playing".
  6. Holding a job increases a member’s relationships and interactions with non-disabled people.