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Peer Advocacy Program
• Case Management
• Community
Placement Team •
Community
Placement Team
There are people for whom living in a homeless
shelter feels completely natural. Just as for most of us losing an apartment and
living in the shelter is unfathomable, to them living in an apartment is equally
unthinkable. Homelessness for some has become a choice.
Housing the
homeless is only the tip of the iceberg; the true challenge is maintaining placement
in the community. For many homeless people the inevitable result of placement
in community housing is, eventually, a return to the shelter. These people have
developed a sense of community in the shelter system. In the shelter all of their
basic life needs are met. They are provided with food and shower facilities as
well as a social network and supports. What motivation can you provide an individual
to leave the shelter when doing so means disrupting not only their living situation
but also severing ties with their community?
In 1999 CHOICE embarked
on a collaboration with Westchester County’s Department of Community Mental
Health and New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Homeless Outreach Project. Our
Community Placement Team (CPT) is the only peer component of an otherwise conventional
administration of outreach services. CHOICE outreach workers have been homeless.
They have been addicted to drugs and have experienced incarceration. They can
identify with the anger, frustration, and fear of their clients. Our staff has
been there. CPT workers are uniquely gifted in communicating with and maintaining
productive relationships with people who have consistently resisted attempts to
reintegrate them into the community.
Clinicians recognize the strength
of the relationship between CPT worker and client, even in crisis. For example,
one provider delayed a client’s involuntary admission, electing to collaborate
with the CPT worker, who met with the client every day until the crisis passed.
There are no sobriety or compliance pre-requisites to receive services
from CPT. Active addiction is the expectation rather than the exception among
this population and rather than judge we engage. CPT workers go directly into
the streets, the storefronts and the parks- wherever our addicted clients frequent.
By meeting some basic needs through our initial contacts we begin to explore longer-term
priorities with our clients. While treatment is never a requirement for our services,
it often is for community housing. If a client is interested in a housing subsidy
we will support them in obtaining treatment.
Unlike many community services
CPT is not a 9:00AM to 5:00PM program. In addition to our daytime services nightly
outreach is made to the county’s Drop-In Centers located in New Rochelle
and Yonkers. Night service begins at 10:00 PM and ends at 1:00 AM, seven nights
a week including weekends. This vital outreach targets perhaps the most difficult
population to engage and assist. Since the Drop-In does not require a shelter
contribution payment nor does it require sobriety or treatment adherence, active
addiction and violent behavior is common among Drop-In residents. Many distrust
anyone resembling authority or representative of the "system". CPT outreach
affords these disenfranchised people the opportunity to work with someone who
is clearly not "of" the system but can negotiate for them "with"
the system.
Homelessness is usually the result of years of abuse and
distrust, a long-standing pattern of behavior or other unfortunate circumstances.
Our outreach is an ongoing process driven by the needs and wants of our clients.
A client who has been homeless or living in the shelter for the past decade may
not welcome our services at the onset. It may take months, even as long as a year,
for them to connect with an outreach worker. In a case like this, a client accepting
a cigarette after a year of failed outreach attempts would in itself be considered
success.
The success of this program is measured not by the number of
successful placements in the community but rather successful engagements. Without
engagement, placements are just numbers and return to homelessness is almost always
a certainty.
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