Elijah’s Journey – A Year In Review
The Organization and Business Concept
In December 2014, Elijah’s Journey, Inc. is a S-Corp that purchased two townhomes Bolingbrook, IL and turned them into CILA homes. A CILA home is a Community Integrated Living Arrangement. It establishes living arrangements for adults (age 18 and older) in a group home, single family home or an apartment.
A CILA serves adults with a mental or developmental disability. The CILA Act requires CILA programs to meet certain requirements so that participants have safe and stable housing arrangements. The Act also requires CILA programs to provide services to assist participants in achieving independence in daily living and economic self-sufficiency. The Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) is the state agency given the authority to enforce these standards. Under the Act, a community mental health or developmental services organization may obtain a license from IDHS to operate a CILA program.
There can be four to eight unrelated adults with low, moderate or high developmental disabilities living under the direct supervision of the community developmental services agency. The residents receive complete and individualized residential habilitation, personal support services and other various supports under the direction of a community support team within the local agency. Elijah’s Journey provides supervised, supportive living arrangements addressing the preferences, strengths, abilities, needs, and life-span issues of adults with developmental disabilities. Either intermittent or 24-hour supports may be provided, as needed.
This has been done through a comprehensive method of assessment, and input from clients, families, and guardians, an Indiv...
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Powers. E.T., Powers, N.J., Merriman, D. (2007). State Funding of Community Agencies for Services Provided to Illinois Residents with Mental Illness and/or Developmental Disabilities. Final Report to the Illinois General Assembly Requesters Pursuant to Public Act 93-842. Institute of Government Affairs. University of Illinois.
Pohl, A. (2013, January 13). Understanding Group Homes. The Daily Herald. Retrieved from https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20121230/news/712309917/
Quality Patient Care Begins With Quality Employees (2013). Retrieved from http://the-tma.org/wp-content/uploads/whitepapers/Quality-Patient-Care-by-First-Advantage.pdf.
United States Department of Labor. Wage and Hour Division. Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/america.htm#Illinois
Precious’s case is unique and layered with many factors that affect her ability to grow into a healthy functioning adult. It is critical to make interventions that consider economic, cultural, psychological, biological and environmental factors that shape the client’s experiences. Providing a safe environment, and supporting Precious on making responsible decisions for the success of her future are my main objectives as her social worker.
Chapter thirteen has two subject matter that it discusses in some detail, mental illness and developmental disabilities. This review will be exploring the history, philosophy and theories of developmental disabilities. Social workers come in contact with many clients that have developmental disabilities, and the chapter gives a glimpse the history, problems, and theories related to developmental problems. Chapter thirteen explores the issues of dealing with developmental disabilities in the past and what is being done today to help social workers face the issues.
The fight for improved health care for those with mental illness has been an ongoing and important struggle for advocates in the United States who are aware of the difficulties faced by the mentally ill and those who take care of them. People unfortunate enough to be inflicted with the burden of having a severe mental illness experience dramatic changes in their behavior and go through psychotic episodes severe enough to the point where they are a burden to not only themselves but also to people in their society. Mental institutions are equipped to provide specialized treatment and rehabilitative services to severely mentally ill patients, with the help of these institutions the mentally ill are able to get the care needed for them to control their illness and be rehabilitated to the point where they can become a functional part of our society. Deinstitutionalization has led to the closing down and reduction of mental institutions, which means the thousands of patients who relied on these mental institutions have now been thrown out into society on their own without any support system to help them treat their mental illness. Years after the beginning of deinstitutionalization and after observing the numerous effects of deinstitutionalization it has become very obvious as to why our nation needs to be re-institutionalized.
In the case of changing the mental health policy in North Carolina, the impetus for the change seems to be adopted by the State Auditor’s report beside other reports of many entities confirming the deviation of mental health service away from its original goal. According to these reports, mental health services are still delivered via traditional health delivery models rather than coordinated well-managed ones. Interestingly, these reports analyze the spectrum of mental health services nationwide with the exception of the State Auditor’s 2000 report Study of the Psychiatric Hospitals and the Area Mental Health Programs which was specifically designed for the North Carolina.
Those with mental illness would live in the community with an array of services and be able to be free from the constraints of confinement. In the early 1960’s the United States began an initiative to reduce and close publicly-operated mental hospitals. This became known as deinstitutionalization. The goal of deinstitutionalization was to allow people suffering from mental illness to live more independently in the community with treatments provided through community health programs. Unfortunately, the federal government did not provide sufficient ongoing funding for the programs to meet the growing demand. States reduced their budgets for mental hospitals but failed to increase funding for on-going community-based mental health programs. As a result of deinstitutionalization hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people were released into the community without the proper resources they needed for their treatment. (Harcourt,
NASMHPD. (2014, Accessed April 27). Retrieved from NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM DIRECTORS: http://www.nasmhpd.org/About/AOMultiStateDisaster.aspx
Christina and her family wish to successfully reunite despite the abuse that occurred in the past. The abuse was brought to the attention of Child Welfare by a teacher who noticed bruises on Christina. The fact that Christina was reluctant to discuss the bruises made the situation all the more suspicious and thus resulted in reporting the situation to Child Welfare. At this point, both the parents and Christina have stated they want their family to eventually be reunited. This is the broad goal that will be used as a starting point by the agency. The purpose of this discussion is to develop a goal plan for Christina and her family that emphasizes family reunification. There are four main points that this plan must address: goal objectives, strengths of the family, target dates of goals and interventions that will be used. In order to address these points the discussion will be split into 4 sections and each of the points will be addressed in a separate section.
States obtain many services that fall under mental health care, and that treat the mentally ill population. These range from acute and long-term hospital treatment, to supportive housing. Other effective services utilized include crisis intervention teams, case management, Assertive Community Treatment programs, clinic services, and access to psychiatric medications (Honberg at al. 6). These services support the growing population of people living in the...
The Life in the Community Reading focus on the decline of people with developmental disabilities in the community and the public establishments that housed them. After the deinstitutionalization, numerous amounts of people were transferred from large institutions to smaller ones in the community. This reading discusses the research on these smaller organizations that contained people with developmental disabilities. They investigated the different methods these institutions used to help integrate people with developmental disabilities into the community. There were five different administrations that contribute to these studies; for instance, the benevolent organization, the professional organization, the intentional community, the organization
Life altering stressors in an individual’s life are frightening. Stressors are varied and, often, unpredictable. Obtaining medical treatment for a physical illness brings hope and perseverance in the fight for health. Losing a job with health insurance and benefits is overwhelming; however, an independent functioning person, with adequate personal and community resources, begins applying for new employment or career change. Enjoyment of life hobbies and interests will be limited, but basic needs are met and health care obtained. However, there are those who have great difficulty obtaining resources for maintaining basic needs. Persons with mental illness, those who are homeless, pregnant teens, or substance abusers are individuals of the vulnerable population. Poverty and discrimination become the way of their life. How does a mentally ill person navigate through the complex process of obtaining health care within their family or community for optimal functioning?
...lighted this feature because I value respect and feel that a very important aspect of working with children is engaging their families which invites opportunity for respect to be demonstrated. Dietze & Kashin (2012) explain the importance of engaging families when they state “Including the input of others is essential in a reflective practice and families have a right to be included” (p.411). In one of my placements I saw the positive impact that including a parent had on a young boy when his mother came in to read a story to the. The boy’s self-esteem seemed to increase and could be seen in the way that he beamed the whole time she was there. This experience highlighted to me the importance of family involvement in an early childhood program. These three highlighted statements all reflect values that are important to me and which are important parts of my practice.
A family assessment is a process for gathering and organizing information in ways that can help a family prevent and or solve problems. The goal is to obtain a full understanding and unbiased view of the strengths and problems. A good assessment is about relationship building, engaging families in an exploration of their strengths, values and goals to build mutual trust and respect. Then when problems do arise, this relationship can be the foundation of open communication allowing the doors to open for identification of additional supports needed to reduce or eliminate the factors causing harm.
Since the beginning of deinstitutionalization in the mid twentieth century, there has been a significant need for community mental health care, which was recognized after long term institutional care was considered ineffective. One concept that arose during the community mental health movement was case management. An important goal of the community mental health movement was to create full time mental health centers throughout the United States, and case management was to provide outpatient care to those who suffered from severe mental illness. Case management is still widely recognized today, and continues to be effective in providing care to clients who suffer from mental illness. Case management is a fundamental solution to the advocacy, recruitment, treatment, and care of both the disadvantaged and mentally disabled individuals.
intervention. Families in Society. Vol. 88, pg. 42. Proquest Direct database. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
In society today, we are working with families and children are more diverse than ever. We are servicing families and children from so many different traditions, beliefs and values. Every family has their own stories. We will find that families and children