I am the nursing supervisor here I've worked for CSB for
approximately 7 years. I manage the medication clinic as well as
supervise all nurses in the building. The Be Well program
has been started up approximately 3 years ago as a
grant which involves integrated primary health care and mental
health services unit. We're actually trying to take care of
a whole person, your depression is affected by your blood
pressure and diabetes and stress and lack of sleep will affect
your diabetes and high blood pressure. You cannot take care
of the whole person without involving both aspects of
people's lives. This is what nursing is about, is trying to
be at that nexus between those two things and trying to work
with clients to improve their overall life. Prior to this a
lot of times mental health was very focused on just mental
health and they were ignoring these other huge, huge problems
that a lot of our clients have diabetes, high blood pressure.
For nursing to be involved in this and to move this forward is
just wonderful and I get a great deal of satisfaction doing it.
I started with the Path Homeless Outreach
program a little over 3.5 years ago and I
basically do outreach into the community looking for homeless
people to assist in getting into housing. “"Hello, anybody out
here, it's Rusty, and Cindy, we're here with the outreach
program." The primary people I am looking for is those that are
chronically homeless as well as having a mental health challenge
and if they meet those two criteria those are the people
that I am going to work very closely with hopefully getting
them to see a psychiatrist and maybe give them some medication
to help stabilize them and then work with helping get other
types of services such as SNAP which is food stamps. I run a
drop in center two times a week where the homeless people would
come and they have access to the showers that we have there, they
can use our laundry services with the washer and dryer, we do
have a nurse that comes in on Tuesdays if they can see the
nurse if they'd like to for anything going on with them
physically and then we do have psychiatric services there as
well too. These people are just real people, they are not
people that are going to hurt you. They are looking to get
their needs met and it's very minute needs. They need food and
shelter, and clothing. I enjoy just sitting down and talking to
them and listening to their stories.
Well, right now, I’'m in a program called the
co-occurring disorders program. It'’s really a recovery program
for adults who have problems with substance abuse as well
as mood instability or other psychiatric disorder
symptom clusters. I’'ve had the privilege
to work in different programs, with different teams, and now
they've brought together alcohol, drug and mental health
and there’'s a lot of cross pollination, and that’'s real
exciting. I also work as a supervisor for graduate interns
and that’'s another thing I am very grateful
to have the opportunity to do.
I am a Clinical Social Work Intern here at the CSB.
And what I like most about this position is being able
to engage with clients who are coming here for the first time,
some who have already been here for a long period of time.
They are here, they’'re growing, and they'’re getting in touch
with resources that they may not have had exposure to
before and they’'re really building a support network.
As an intern, I also do case management and one of my
clients was looking for employment and so I was able to
refer them to an employment specialist. I really got them
motivated in looking for a position. They were able to
recently receive a job opportunity, started working,
and that’'s really helped them to feel more confident
and really help reduce some of the anxiety they feel when they
come into therapy and talk about it with the group. It made me
feel really great knowing that I was able to help facilitate that
process and motivate the client to be able to feel empowered and
go out into the community and find a position that fit their needs.
What I like most about my job, is being part of a team
that I know is going to improve the quality of life for the
community and we have the resources to do it. We'’re
constantly seeing each other, they have a lot of staff
meetings, team meetings. We share a commitment and a passion
for the work that we do and all the resources we'’re getting and
pulling in different disciplines to see if you know something I
don’'t know and what programs do you have that I didn’'t know
about. So you're constantly evolving, the resources evolve,
your perspective evolves, so I think it’'s an exciting place to
work. I know there is a stigma around mental health. I know a
lot of people because of that will try to medicate themselves
with drugs and alcohol. Which is why this awareness of this
co-occurring disorders is really people trying to help themselves
in a way that’'s not helpful. But initially appears to be.
I think we’'re here to help people cut through, and realize
that there's help. No one is going to be able to make a
change until they can accept that they need assistance and
they know that we’'re here. If you call entry and referral,
if we can’'t help you, we’'ll provide you with resources or
source of education. But, we'’re here to respond 01:05:27.290,01:05:15.245 to the needs of the community.