Developing Capacity and Infrastructure in Client Communities: Some Theory and Examples in Homelessness and Mental Health

Services for people with severe mental illness histories include both congregate (e.g., hospitals, residential treatment) and individual (e.g., ACT) models. However, long-term planning inevitably encourages individual reintegration through scattered site housing, individual job placement, and other plans that often leave the individual isolated and dependent upon professionals for support. Similarly, when people who are homeless form mutually supportive collective relationships, e.g., in homeless encampments, these useful relationships are undercut when people are placed in scattered site permanent housing. This talk will explore a different approach--achieving social inclusion and participation through services that build upon the mutual support of service recipients. U.S. and international examples of self-organized and designed services that build client communities will be explored through the lens of capacity and infrastructure building, and some examples will be provided of how more traditional services can be modified to build client community.

Jim Mandiberg, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Management and Social Enterprise at the Columbia University School of Social Work. He worked for 17 years as a manager of mental health agencies and systems, including 11 years as the Director of Community Support and Community Mental Health Services for Santa Clara County in California. Prior to coming to Columbia, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at Shikoku Gakuin University in Japan, and he was a visiting professor at Sophia University in Tokyo in 2006. His principal research is on the strategic survival and diffusion of non-conforming innovations, on social movements in social services, and on the social and economic development of social service client communities, including social enterprise business development.

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