Author Archives: Chacku Mathai

NYAPRS PROS Implementation Academy in Albany on November 15-16, 2012

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

The 3rd Annual NYAPRS PROS Implementation Academy, Meeting the Challenge: Developing the Tools for Today and Tomorrow,  will be at the Holiday Inn – Turf on Wolf Road in Albany, NY on November 15 and 16, 2012. NYAPRS develops the PROS Implementation Academy curriculum in collaboration with the New York State Office of Mental Health,  the Center for Practice Innovations and PROS providers from across New York State.

Every PROS program that registers to attend the PROS Academy will receive a free copy of the NYAPRS Employment and Economic Self-Sufficiency Workbook for People in Recovery and Curriculum Provider Guide. 

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Posted in PROS Services

WE Can Save Campaign Participant Workbook: A Workbook for People in Recovery Seeking Economic Self-Sufficiency

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment


 

 

NYAPRS is pleased to announce the release of the WE Can Save Campaign Participant Workbook: A Workbook for People in Recovery Seeking Economic Self-Sufficiency.

Poverty and dependency are two of the most important barriers to psychiatric rehabilitation, recovery and wellness. Our conversations with hundreds of people in recovery have shown us that most of them have a strong desire to work, earn higher income, gain control over their personal finances, build assets, and achieve greater levels of self-sufficiency. Our surveys with practitioners also tell us that many of them want to help but do not necessarily know how. This 104-page workbook offers individuals in recovery practical information, useful worksheets, and inspiring personal stories of recovery and economic self-sufficiency; and provides practitioners with tools to support individuals to develop their readiness, create an individualized plan of action, and develop their financial skills (e.g., budgeting, accessing work incentives, filing taxes, saving, clearing and building credit).

The price of the Participant Workbook is $17.00 (for practitioners, organizational purchases and mail-in purchases). Individuals in recovery may purchase a copy at the subsidized rate of $8.00 at onsite exhibit tables, events, or when purchased directly from NYAPRS staff.

Download the WE Can Work/WE Can Save Order Form

View the Participant Workbook Table of Contents and Introduction

View a sample of a Participant Workbook Handout

View a sample of a Participant Workbook Worksheet

View a sample of a financial education Skill module

View a sample of a Personal Story of Recovery and Economic Self-Sufficiency

If you are a service provider, we have some other good news for you. Our team has also developed A Provider’s Guide to Promoting Economic Self-Sufficiency: A Recovery-Oriented Approach. The goal of this companion provider guide is to offer practitioners a recovery-oriented service framework, tools and curricula to work with people in recovery either in one-on-one or group settings. This Provider Guide will be released and available in mid-September 2011.

View the Provider Guide Table of Contents and Introduction

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Posted in Benefits and Financial Management, Intensive Rehabilitation Goal Acquisition, PROS Services

Inspired to Be Hired: Genuine Community Circles Curriculum

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out Noelle Pollet’s suggestions for experiential group exercises in PROS that support people to explore their biggest ideas!

Gem for the day:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and

don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather…

teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

-Antoine deSaint-Exupery

Hello!

…So you’ve got your team, your flexible format, some experience facilitating and debriefing Alternatives to Violence Project (A.V.P.)-type exercises, and a measure of comfort among people having “voice” (see first four articles).  Now onto specific (PROS and beyond) outcomes!

A Quick Note on “Growing Your Own”:

 There’s joy to be had in the creative process of building an exercise or agenda, whether done with a team or on your own.  (If done on your own, expect, invite and honor team feedback!)  Growing skills to tailor-make experiences is especially useful for PROS… the mission of which involves honoring the needs of each “crop” of individuals being served.

My method is to imagine what is needed to achieve a specific outcome (perspective shift, skills development, energy release, etc.) and then ask for guidance from Transforming Power! (Article #4)  Using knowledge of other exercises, sometimes flipping through the manuals, and doing my best to access an open mind, the ideas start to come…

This may sound unreasonable; as though I’m attributing my unique talents to everyone…   And I am!  But it’s not unreasonable!  I have been facilitating prison and other workshops for 20 years and most A.V.P. facilitators (if not all?) develop skills to create agendas, and often, exercises.  Some, immediately!  If you’re at all drawn to be a facilitator, odds are you’ve got the goods!

The following agenda was created for a mental health conference and went on to be a staple training.  It always engaged and encouraged loads of positivity.  While outwardly addressing the “outcome” of employment, on a deeper level it calls up passion for the greater mission we all have inside us…  I know of one person who participated in the “King of the World” exercise and achieved his dream!

Continue reading →

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Posted in Engagement, Group Facilitation Techniques, Intensive Rehabilitation Goal Acquisition, PROS Services

Genuine Community Circles: The Acid Test: Allowing “Voice”

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

Here’s another inspired post in Noelle Pollet’s Genuine Community Circle Series. See her earlier posts for more information called Genuine Community Circles and Getting Started with Genuine Community Circles.

Gem for the Day:

The most precious thing we can share with each other is the gift of attention

-Allie Middleton

“Voice,” an expression I learned while working at NYAPRS, is to me, the cornerstone of community.  It means everyone gets to have their say.

Encouraging voice brings myriad gifts:

  • It honors each of us exactly as we are at a given moment on our journey…
  • …and offers the respect of faith in our ability to grow…
  • It gives us a chance to release what’s inside us… and notice how it affects others…
  • It offers opportunity for the solidarity of shared experiences or feelings…
  • It teaches us all to take things less personally…
  • It facilitates the giving and receiving of the unique bounty: wisdom, solutions, talents, skills, insight, life-experience, etc. of every magnificent individual…
  • ,,,which, in turn, heals and enhances our culture…
  • It creates investment in the community as a safe place to “be me”…
  • It challenges us to live in a vibrant ever-changing flow as each person grows and changes…
  • You add yours…

I’ve witnessed many voice-related “miracles.”  One involved a man speaking up in a community gathering for the first time, using a “talking stick” format…  He transferred the experience to speaking up with his mom, and shortly moved out of a residence he’d been ready to leave for seven years!

Continue reading →

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Posted in Group Facilitation Techniques

Providing Effective Leadership for Curriculum-based Groups

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

This excellent post comes from Aaron Vieira, LMSW, Associate Director for the Center for Rehabilitation and Recovery and offers a strong framework for curriculum based group leadership. Aaron offers specialized training in curriculum based group facilitation for PROS programs in New York City through the Center for Rehabilitation and Recovery.

“How do you guide a group through a curriculum (in a time-limited period) and manage the socio-emotional aspects of a group?” As a group work educator and clinical consultant, I have been asked this question often over the last six months. This is not surprising given the fact that clinical staff in PROS programs are increasingly being asked to lead curriculum-based groups.  The challenges that these group leaders face are real. It can be hard to stay on task (i.e., follow a curriculum) when the messy process of human interaction constantly threatens to derail the work of the group. That said, the key to effectively leading curriculum-based groups is to strike a balance between task and process. Continue reading →

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Posted in Group Facilitation Techniques

Getting Started with Genuine Community Circles

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

Noelle Pollet joins us once again with even more guidance and expertise on developing engaging experiential exercises and activities that really help people connect with each other, the group content, objectives and how it relates to their personal dreams and aspirations. According to Noelle, it even works best with self-directed, concurrent documentation practices! Download her full article at the end of this post.

Hello Again! After providing some overview of an A.V.P.-based experiential process for creating Genuine Community Circles within the mental health system (see first article),  and a bit more “housekeeping”, this writing and others going forward will describe component exercises, suggest agendas,  offer related information, and include reasoning on how these offerings apply to reaching desired outcomes.

Reminder of some benefits to PROS programs and beyond:  This process…

  • …is easily personalize-able to assist with the individual goals of group members
  • …can be tailored to fit specific outcomes
  • …can accommodate a large number of participants and facilitators (or work with the specified 8…) Ideally, the entire community would participate at times
  • …develops leadership skills/interpersonal skills/self-confidence, etc.
  • …furnishes insight into self & others; develops self-responsibility
  • …equalizes power which encourages true community
  • …has a non-dogmatic spiritual basis…
  • …is Fun!
  • …provides a safe way to go deep… and a playful way to move through the “deep”
  • …is creative…  arrange and/or make up exercises to fit needs
  • …has a flexible format…  blocks of any curricula can be interwoven
  • …provides tools and format transferable to other life situations
  • …works best with con-current documentation (evaluating before ‘closing’)
  • …makes us all powerful healers!

Continue reading →

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Posted in Group Facilitation Techniques

Draft Curriculum for Developing Readiness for Change

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| 3 Comments

This post is offered by Cynthia Monares at Mental Health Association of New York City. She is still in the process of drafting sections of this curriculum to include support for developing self and environmental awareness with people considering a life role goal in PROS. She welcomes your feedback and support and has started a topic in PROS TALKS! about it. Please feel free to join the dialogue.

I am working on “Am I Ready to Change?” course curriculum, which is based on the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Readiness Determination assessment. Since our agency will be converting to PROS around September this year, we are still working on the first month’s curricula and hoping we’re on the right track.

Creating a curriculum from scratch is pretty intimidating, and I really wasn’t sure if I was doing this right, but I tried to stick to the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Readiness form I was given and made sure I included all the factors in there—what changes the individuals I work with would want in terms of living, working, learning, and socializing.

Continue reading →

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Posted in PROS Services

Revised Health and Well-Being Curriculum

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

The following update is shared by Lesley Fine, PROS Facilitator at Community Access’ East Village Access PROS program.

The University of Minnesota’s Health and Well-Being Curriculum is Being Revised.

The curriculum, Developing a Personal Plan for Health and Well-Being with the Circle of Health, will be removed next year.  For those who would like to print out aspects of this curriculum while it is still online, it is unfortunately not available in PDF.  However, a revised version of this curriculum has been developed that allows for easier printing of materials.

On this site, under the Create a Healthy Lifestyle heading, you will find 10 tools on topics such as Diet & Nutrition, Stress Mastery, Relationships, and Self-Care & Prevention.  There is also a tool that helps people create goals – with sample goals provided that are based on where someone is according to stages of change principles.

When you click on a particular tool, you can print out the various subject categories listed on the left.  It is not possible to print out the accompanying assessments.  Our program invested in a projector and screen to do the Health and Well-Being curriculum, which has minimized the need for printing and made the groups more interesting.  Having a projector also allows for showing short relevant video clips to be used as the basis for discussion (for this or any other curriculum), which participants have greatly appreciated.

If you are interested in checking out the newer version of the Health and Well-Being curriculum, play around on the above-mentioned site to get familiar with it.  If you find that it doesn’t completely meet the needs of your participants, you can always incorporate bits and pieces into your existing curriculum – i.e., take what you like, and leave the rest.

A last note:  the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota is currently revising all of their online modules, so down the road we can expect even further changes and improvements.

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Posted in PROS Services, Wellness self-management

Personalizing Wellness Self-Management Curriculum

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

This Wellness Self-Management Curriculum post comes from Lesley Fine, PROS Facilitator, at Community Access’ East Village Access. Click on the link at the end of this post to download her module in MS Word.

Course Overview: This course is designed to supplement the standardized Wellness Self Management Curriculum. This course will expand upon topics which have been touched upon in the WSM curriculum, and will cover the topics in more depth. It will focus on the concepts of stress,  and triggers,  as barriers to all aspects of recovery, including behavioral issues, substance abuse, physical well-being, and emotional recovery. The focus will be on how good stress management can break down barriers to reaching identified goals in the different recovery domains.

Description: Each person has a very individual, personalized path in recovery. This is their own Path to Wellness.  These sixteen modules include various exercises, activities, techniques, and assignments, designed to identify stressors and triggers, and the skills needed to recognize them and avoid the consequences of reacting. Modules will use an initial self-assessment by each participant in the group, as a starting point for the work of that module. The same self-assessment will be revisited at the end of the sixteen modules to evaluate progress.  Homework is sometimes assigned at the end of a module, and then reviewed at the start of the next module, and evaluated.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Coping Skills Training, PROS Services, Wellness self-management

Genuine Community Circles

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Chacku Mathai| Leave a comment

This post comes from Noelle Pollet, formerly a Recovery Facilitation Consultant for NYAPRS, who brings remarkable experience in facilitating engaging and motivating groups experiences through the Alternatives to Violence Project experiential workshop approach. Noelle will share her experience as well as specific exercises and activities that will certainly enhance and strengthen your group’s experience with any of your curriculum.

The tools for experiential circle work I’ll be sharing in this column are treasures from my own recovery journey.   As a long-time volunteer for The Alternatives to Violence Project, I’ve gained enough insight and interpersonal skill to leave behind the chaotic identity that earned me eight psychiatric diagnoses (including PTSD, Manic Depression & Schizophrenia).  A large chunk of this transformation came within my first three day workshop!  I knew from that point forward I’d be a faithful servant to this process, and I know many others who feel the same way!

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Posted in Group Facilitation Techniques