Agency Overview
The branch of the Stevens Center at 253 Penrose is Carlisle's drop-in psychological and social rehabilitation center. The Center is open 8-3:30 Monday through Friday, and closed on the weekends. The Stevens Foundation oversees the many different Stevens Centers.
Mission
The mission of the Stevens Foundation is to provide persons with cognitive, developmental and physical disabilities access to programs and services that will help them attain their life goals. It is also their mission to assist family, friends and the community in their efforts to ensure full participation and success in all aspects of life for persons with disabilities. (Stevens Foundation Website)
Carlisle's Stevens Center hopes to empower its members by providing a healthy and comfortable enviornment for recreation purposes, to learn independence, to gain employment, and in general, to have a normal life. The members themselves run the day to day operations of the building, while the administrator oversees all management aspects. There is a hot lunch offered three days a week, an organized trip, occasional parties, outings or in-house movies. The members decide the menu for the lunches, buy and prepare all the food, clean the kitchen and divide the daily chores between themselves each day. There are also opportunities to work as janitorial staff, in the horticulture room, preparing meals and for the Warmline.
The central mission can be summed up in three words: empowerment, confidence, and flexibility. Many of these members have been told that they are worthless, and the mission here is to try to get them to take back their life. The director of this program, Stephanie, wants to give the members a level of flexibility, a chance to find values that perhaps had been lost within themselves, and feel empowered with the belief that they are just as normal as everyone is. The key point here being...these members are just like the rest of us, except they have different methods of coping. Thus, they want to teach these methods of coping in a way that can empower each member.
History
The history of how the Steven's Center came about is more of a developmental process than an idea. They first started out on Louther Street, known as the Sadler clinic. They were really small and their main focus was social rehabilatation within the group. It was more of a "drop in" and "hangout" center in the beginning. The individuals that are a part of this group are called "members," and it was a place for them to expand socially and learn how to interact in different situations. However, as influential as this might be, the facilatators realized that they needed more of an emphasis on psychological rehabilitation. With the increasing amounts of technology, there is a "new wave" of how to treat disabilities that is being developed. First and foremost, there is the medical model, which incorporates how Doctors and medical figures label a patient as "sick," and that they ultimately know what is best for the patient. Although seeing a doctor and getting medicine is vitally important to your health, there is also another aspect of personal rehabilitation that needs to be accounted for. This is called the recovery model. This type of model portrays how the individual makes their own decisions, and it primarily revolves around the fact of pursuing your individuality -- doing what is best for you. Because of this type of modeling, the Steven's group needed to expand, and that is when they moved to the office near Walmart. The main focus at this clinic is to take back that level of functioning that was stripped away from these members; it is more of a psychological rehabilitation and they learn how to do what is in their best interest moreso than listening to what all the doctors tell them.
Services Offered
There are an array of different services provided by the Steven's Group. The first is obviously social rehabilitation, where they learn to build relationships, and improve their social skills. The second service is psychological rehabilitation, where they learn to rebuild their own life based on their own decisions. Also, they have a consumer run hotline service, called the "Warmline," for positive reinforcement. A member who may need someone to listen to their problems or to help them finish their day could call this number for support. Finally there are numerous employement opportunities within the Steven's Group. Many of the members here have not had a job in 20 years, so opportunities for empolyment include, cooking, cleaning, running errands, etc. If you are empolyed by the Steven's Group, you are called a "Member-Employee." The employment opportunities serve to slowly incorporate them back into the "normal" life they once had. Also, many workshops are provided for purposes of recovery. These workshops focus on the individual's skills, so there might be a knitting workshop or a painting workshop which allows one to explore their hidden talents. So often the members are devalued and marginalized by those "normal" people that they in turn separate themselves from the rest of the world and forget they actually have talent and achievable goals.
Cultural Assumptions
There are also many issues that come along with an organization of such from the community in general. First of all, this center is technically labeled as a mental rehabilitation center from the outside world because many of the members here have a diagnosed mental disability. Because of this, many of these members are sterotypically labeled as crazy, violent, lazy, and that they are of little worth. To shed light on a more personal note, I said from day one of this service learning that their "disability" was going to jump out at me...when in fact, some individuals I met barely gave any leeway for me to believe they were mentally disabled. I had my own assumption due to the cultural stigma of what disabled individuals are like. I questioned what I would talk about in conversation with these individuals, what topics should I avoid (i.e family), and whether or not I should talk about my life with them. I assumed that these individuals were unable of carrying an intellectual, adult conversation, and I assumed that if I told them about my life at Dickinson, I might come off as a snub, and I certainly did not want to do that! Contrary to what I believed, these individuals proved me otherwise. Many of them were interested in my life, my college career, my family, and my physical deformity. Also, when I told them about my life, I did not feel as if I was coming off in a inferior way, but I felt as if I could relate to them in some way or another. It is very clear to see also that the media does not help to alleviate this cultural assumptions either. In a way, media picks on these individuals. Yes, every now and then we get an impacting movie such as A Beautiful Mind, and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but for the most part the media represents the negativity surrounded by these cultural assumptions. They may not technically add to the cultural stigma but they certainly do not try to represent these individuals in an culturally accepting way.
The Director
Unlike many other agencies, Stephanie Faron, the Center's Director, is happy to say that money is the Center's last problem. She is very proud of Cumberland County because they stand firmly behind the Center and what it has to offer the surrounding communities. Unfortunately, it is the misconceptions of the Carlisle community that have caused problems for the agency. There is constantly a stigma associated with the building; Stephanie feels that many members of the community do not take her or the Center seriously. Recently, the members of the Center have had a problem with a local store owner. This person raises the prices of goods when the members buy items, refuses to let certain members enter the store and is constantly disrespecting them.
Faron first became interested in doing social work involving people with disabilities when she was in college. It was during this time that she landed a summer job working at a facility that treated many individuals living with disability. At first she recalled being scared, but soon developed a passion for the line of work. It is her desire and ultimate goal to help the people in the Stevens Group to regain their independence as well as their recognition as citizens who have an active and positive role in society. The Stevens Group is more of a club that is designed to provide a social and comfortable environment, where the members can feel like they are not being treated like they have a disability. To Faron, this perspective is destructive as well as false. In her own words, "just because you have a disability doesn't mean you can't take care of yourself," and that is what she stresses at the Stevens Group.
How to Become a Member
Most of the individuals who come to the Stevens Group are "high functioning." However, a good portion of the people there were previously in hospitals for years, where lying in bed and receiving treatment was the normal daily practice for them. Each member has a case manager who follows the individual's progress, condition, as well as the wants and needs of the individual. If the case manager as well as the individual would like the individual to become involved with the Stevens Group, the case manager must write a referral. At this point, the potential member comes in for an interview with Stephanie Faron. In this interview, Faron assesses if he or she is appropriate by the behavior and attitude they present. At this point in time, Faron has only ever turned away one individual because the person was offensive and angry, a potentially destructive element to add to the amiable atmosphere at the Stevens Group.
What Stephanie Faron stresses when speaking of the members' past up until the point of joining the Stevens Group is the concept of loss. By the time the individuals become a part of the Stevens Group they have lost everything. Due to the policies that are in place regarding the area of mental health, a person usually has to lose everything before he or she can get help. They lose their job, their friends, their car, their family sometimes, their money, the house, and their identity. The provides this opportunity for them to get help, but only once they have usually reached rock bottom.
