This is part 28 of a series. To go back to the very beginning, start with part one. To go back to the start of this section, start with part fifteen.
Both Glenora Farm and JPUSA provide members with a big extended family by living together. New York City’s Fountain House demonstrates that people don’t need to live together to become family.
Once or twice a year I dog sit for friends a few blocks away from the Fountain House building in Manhattan, so I’ve walked by it countless times. I’d noted it as an attractive building covered in ivy, but hadn’t paid any attention until I finally went in.1
It’s got that warmth and buzz that makes a place feel welcoming. It reminded me of a university dorm, full of personal touches to make it feel like home. It was also full of friendly chatter and activity.
It’s the way the Fountain House operates as a family – supporting each other in all sorts of ways, without scorekeeping – that makes it so important. People are glad to be there. Of course they are, since participation is entirely voluntary, from becoming a member to showing up each day to deciding to get involved in running things.
The building is bustling with activity. There’s a lot to do and a lot to be done – working in the garden center, running the art gallery, staffing their coffee bar, helping on their farm, and working in any of their social enterprises. Others are hanging out at that coffee bar or in the scattered seating, just enjoying each other’s company.
Just like a family, your membership doesn’t expire. You aren’t required to volunteer. You can leave or choose not participate for any length of time, for any reason, and still return.
When I visited, it was the sort of rainy day where there aren’t a lot of other places in NYC that will get you out of the house without costing money. It’s more than just a place to pass time, re-pot plants, or learn a new art technique. Members have access to a range of practical support, from both professional staff and peers (and some with both professional training and lived experience). With other people there to help secure housing, get and keep them enrolled in services, help them find a job, and provide all sorts of social and educational opportunities, the “caregivers” in their lives can remember what it is to be a friend, family member, or partner.
I thought of the caregivers I know who hardly go out for fear that their loved one will be judged for their appearance or behavior. I think of the people who go it alone – struggling to navigate access to services or doing without. Imagine how it would change things to have your loved one surrounded by friends and resources instead of sitting at home. Imagine knowing that, even without you, there would be a whole group of people ready to rally around them when they have a hard time.
An important part of the Fountain House is the lack of divide between service providers and service recipients. There are the categories of staff, volunteers, and members, sure. Most members are also volunteers, since there are so many things to get involved with and each has so much that needs doing. The staff includes members as well.
The Fountain House was the visions of people with lived experience of mental illness, who had been institutionalized because of it. This is not a top-down program where the experts decide what other people need. This is not a place where the experts brought in a panel of people with lived experience at the last minute for a focus group to inform their branding. This is a place that trusts people to make choices for themselves. It’s designed to bring out the best in people, to create the right conditions for someone rather than try to change the person.
The building reminded me of a university, but there’s no set pathway for progress at the Fountain House. There’s no push to get people into a job or achieve some other goal. The goal is to support each other; to live a better life together than they could alone. That means any goals members have are ones they’ve chosen for themselves.
Some people join and jump in. The Fountain House has a lot going on and a lot of members, so it’d be hard to not find something you’d want to join. Others hang around for a very long time before getting involved, one tentative step at a time. That’s where the coffee bar and very affordably priced meals come in. Luring people in with something tasty gets them to keep showing up and gives them time to confirm they’re safe here. When people are comfortable they can explore their interests and get to know other members. Becoming a family isn’t something that happens overnight.
A model to replicate and adapt
In Jackie Goldstein’s book about programs that capture the spirit of Geel, Voices of Hope for Mental Illness: Not Against, With, she provides histories of programs that are frustratingly fairytale-like. In one story after another, someone is struck by inspiration and they magically have the money and influence to bring their dream to fruition. Goldstein tells us:
“Some patients may have responded to moral treatment, but in general, Rockland [State Hospital]’s history leaves little to be admired – except for the legacy of those six inpatients who, while still hospitalized in the 1940s, formed a self-help group called We Are Not Alone (WANA). After leaving Rockland, the group stayed active with meetings on the steps of the New York Public Library. In 1944, they held an official meeting in Manhattan’s Third Street YMCA, with ten former patients and one former volunteer present. Four years later, in 1948, they purchased a four-thousand-square-foot brownstone on West Forty-Seventh Street. Inspired by a fountain on the grounds, which founders saw as a symbol of hope and renewal, they renamed their group and incorporated as the Fountain House Foundation.”
Why am I so irked by Goldstein’s writing? It’s one more researcher telling us fairytales that obscure the path to affirming, empowering support. She denies the reality that Geel was a state asylum practicing moral treatment, just like Rockland. She gives no hint of how a group of people who had been incarcerated and stripped of their status as adults capable of making their own decisions bought a building and created what’s now an international program.
The origin story given for the Fountain House on their website, in contrast, retains the important details. The original leaders had different backgrounds and motives for participation, which they blended into a shared vision. People with lived experience of mental health struggles drove the program from the very beginning. They were able to enlist the support of powerful organizations to unlock funding from different sources (including the state government) as well as funded by significant donations from the family and friends of members. There’s no mythical hero, just people like any of us, working together with existing organizations to change the way things are done.
Most importantly, if you want to start a clubhouse like the Fountain House, you can. Just like you can open a Dunkin Donuts franchise, you can create a clubhouse of your own. Sure, the goals of a clubhouse and a chain coffee shop are pretty different. In both cases, an experienced team will provide you with what you need to get started and be there to guide you. You can fully embrace the clubhouse model or you can take what feels right and adapt it to your community. This means there may already be a clubhouse near you, since there are over 300 of them.
It’s never easy to establish an organization to provide support to vulnerable people, especially when services are provided at no cost to participants. One benefit of opening a clubhouse is that you can answer the concerns of potential funders, partners, neighbors, and government agencies by pointing to actual programs following the same model, some of which have been running for decades.
The clubhouse
The Fountain House doesn’t provide mental health treatment, yet somehow it’s very effective at improving the health and wellbeing of members. It does so by addressing the social determinants of health. The clubhouse is a social practice, where the cultivation of an intentional community gives people the opportunity to experience psychosocial rehabilitation.
There is a beauty to the way programs like Glenora Farm and JPUSA are all-encompassing. Those residential communities provide everything their members need and are practically self sufficient. Everyone is given a place to live, a job to do, and a life based on shared values. Even though residents are encouraged to take part in the world outside of the community, any community where everyone lives and works together will tend to be insular. When that community is a good fit, it becomes a safe haven.
The clubhouse model doesn’t provide for the basic needs of members directly. Just like an idealized small town community, the clubhouse provides members with resources to help them secure what they need – be it housing, paid employment, help navigating the medical system, help getting enrolled in other support, or the ear of a friend. This makes for a loose community where members remain (or become) integrated into the larger community. The only shared value among members is the knowledge that people who have been diagnosed with a mental illness can be valuable members of a community, good coworkers, and wonderful friends. Members have much more choice in how they spend their days and where they live, making the clubhouse a good fit for a much wider range of people than a residential community.
Today, Geel’s adult foster care program is essentially a legacy program. The OPZ Geel operates a community center for current and former patients that operates very much like a clubhouse.
I didn’t take any pictures, but you can see some on the Xylom, Manhattan Sideways, amNY and Gothamist.