Joel Corcoran
Appearances
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
There's usually some kind of a business or administration or communications room where people are doing work on computers, maybe putting out a newsletter, maybe reporting to the funding source on statistics and things they need to, planning the schedule for the next week. Typically, the clubhouse will be divided into what we call units.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
A typical clubhouse has some kind of a clerical unit, some kind of a
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
food service unit oftentimes clubhouses will have employment or employment education units that are designed around helping to support people with education and employment clubhouse might have a space that takes care of the facility and members gather in those units they choose where they want to work there's a small staff so they'll be spread out amongst the units in the clubhouse
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
And every day during the day, we have what's called the work order day. So if you came in between typically nine and five, you'd see people organized around doing work. If you're in an office-based unit, you'll be doing office work. If you're in a food service unit, they'll be doing food service. If you're in a facilities unit, you're doing that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
There might be a horticulture unit that's growing food for the clubhouse and taking care of the landscaping and all that. So there's voluntary work going on. Remember I said the work is what is restorative. So people sharing work and doing it is the concept. So you would see people working together.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
The role of the staff person in a clubhouse is to engage members, to get to know them, to build a relationship with them. And doing that through shared work is really important. So you'll see people in the kitchen. You won't see people off in one corner by themselves. You'll see people working at a table together, sharing the work, planning the work.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
If you see a group of people planning evening and weekend activities for the coming month, They'll probably be sitting around a table together sharing that work. Clubhouses like to use whiteboards. They put everything up there so that anybody who comes in can see what's going on and what work opportunities there are. So you'll see that. You'll see modern office equipment.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
In our clubhouses, we talk about making the place image enhancing. So it won't look like a poor, underfunded social service program. Most clubhouses will be the furniture, what's hanging on the walls, the condition of the building, of the property, always image enhancing, fresh and new and modern, working with equipment that they might be working with when they're out employed.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
And the way that we do that is by helping to grow the number and the quality of clubhouse rehabilitation programs, a rehabilitation program called Clubhouse. A clubhouse is an intentional community. It's a voluntary place where people living with mental illness, again, by and large, people with serious mental illness, but anybody with a history of mental illness is welcome.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
They might be gaining new skills. So there might be a media unit where many clubhouses do podcasts, for example, or make videos or weekly or daily television shows to keep everybody informed about what's going on at the clubhouse and what opportunities are. So you see people working on those kinds of things.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
The other thing you'll see is people treating each other with a tremendous amount of respect and dignity and care because the clubhouses are a caring community. It's really very impressive to see how people treat each other with such positive regard and make sure that each other's okay, making sure that people are invited to engage in whatever activity that's going on there.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
So you'll see people treating each other very nice.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
When we talk to a new group about building a clubhouse, we say, you want to have your clubhouse in a place that is easily accessible. Typically, people who are members of clubhouses are living at or near or below the poverty line. You want to be where there's public transportation, where people can get there. So we want to have easy access to employment opportunities.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I know I keep coming back to that, but employment is a cornerstone of the clubhouse model. We want people to be able to access employers, so businesses or public services, or we have folks that are employed in government offices or in libraries or at the local big box store or law firm or accounting office who have people working in jobs where they're being supported there.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
So the clubhouse needs to be in reasonable access to those kinds of things. You want it to be a safe neighborhood. Again, think about the phrase image enhancing. In my work before I became the director of Clubhouse International, I was involved with opening three different clubhouses.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Their addresses were 209 Main Street in one city, 510 Main Street in another city, and 44 Main Street in another city. So you can see where I think clubhouses belong.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I started in 1986 working at Clubhouse in Hyannis, Massachusetts. So I've been doing that. I've been at Clubhouse International since 1995 and the executive director, CEO since 97.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Tony, I appreciate that question. For our first 30 years, we spent a lot of time helping new clubhouses grow and go and building a training program that you talked about earlier. It was a consistent training program at our 12 training centers around the world. We also have a quality assurance program. It's a formal accreditation program.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
So establishing that and then building a very tightly knit network of clubhouses is across the world. We spent a lot of time doing that. But as we approached our 30th anniversary, we started thinking, okay, where are we going? What's next? Why do we see it going?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
And when I say we, our board, our staff, our members and staff are in leadership positions with our organization from clubhouses around the world. We all could agree on one thing, that there aren't nearly enough clubhouses in the world, that the pace with which we're growing, while steady and good, has been too slow.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
There are millions and millions of people who need access to the kind of supportive community that a clubhouse is and the opportunity system to help to recover and rebuild their lives. We do not think that we're going fast enough. So our focus now is on accelerating the growth and development of clubhouses.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
And so while we have 377 clubhouses today, we were at 340 when we were talking about this, and we're hoping to triple the number of clubhouses by 30-30 across the world. We are seeing a growing interest in clubhouses. There's so much evidence out there supporting clubhouses as an evidence-based effective practice.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
It's designed to be a community that is rich with opportunities for people to rebuild their lives and reclaim their futures after having been so dramatically disrupted by an illness. People living with mental illness are typically separated from many of the things we all take for granted. They get marginalized and they've usually not finished school, but not always.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
There are academic studies as well as government reports that are showing that clubhouses reduce the need for use of more expensive services like hospitals and emergency services or emergency rooms. They reduce criminal justice system involvement for people with mental illness, increase housing, increase general well-being. People living with mental illness typically die 15 to 20 years earlier.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
And people without mental illness, usually because of undiagnosed comorbid health care conditions that go undiagnosed because a person's mental illness either prevents them from participating or reasons of stigma or discrimination or maybe fear on the person's part or economics. And so club houses do a lot to help people address those problems. and healthy lifestyle.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
There's a lot of evidence out there showing that. So it's a unique time where public and private mental health advocacy organizations and service organizations are recognizing the value of clubhouses. And we're getting a lot of attention that's coming and saying, we need clubhouses in our community. 30 new clubhouses opened and joined Clubhouse International last year.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
We are working now to accelerate public awareness about what a clubhouse is, how Clubhouse International works to support clubhouses, and giving communities access to training and information so that they can start their own clubhouses and join our network of support. We're optimistic about the future. Our vision is that one day clubhouses will be as commonplace in the world as clubs.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCAs and senior centers. We think every community needs a clubhouse just like those organizations are needed. And that's what we're working towards.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I think it's a couple of things. I'll do it briefly. But first, I was reading a newsletter this morning. Our newsletter, a member of Clubhouse called Mosaic Clubhouse in London, her name's Helen.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
She wrote a little piece in there describing herself and she talked about being in and out of hospitals from the time she was in her teens and early 20s and just feeling completely disconnected to the world. And she said when she came across Mosaic Clubhouse, that all changed, that just being welcomed and being able to use what Mosaic Clubhouse had to offer at her own pace.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I think she said, I was able to dip in and dip out as I needed. And now I'm back on a good path. And she said, I'm now working again. I said to myself, I want to tell Tony about that when I talk to him, because that's the experience we're talking about here. So I want people to remember that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
There was another member who told me once a long story about his life and how his life was disrupted by mental illness later in life. And he lost a good job and a home and a family. Even though he had been educated at Yale and worked in school of business, he had to go home and live with his mother in Milwaukee.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
And he lived in his basement for three years, afraid to come out and to talk to other people. And eventually, after a lot of encouragement from therapists and supporters, he tried the local clubhouse there, Grand Avenue Club. He said to me, he said, Joel, I have a message for you. Something I hear often. He said to me, this clubhouse is great for me. And it literally saved my life.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I don't think I'd be here today without it. And that's very common to hear from clubhouse members. But he said, I want to ask you a question. The people were hanging around bus stations and on street corners, panhandling or in homeless enclaves in cities. I said, yeah. He said, a lot of those folks have mental health challenges or mental illnesses. I said, yeah.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
They've had their early lives interrupted. In most cases, they lose family, they lose friends, they lose access to employment or money. And a lot of times, maybe the worst thing is they lose hope for the future.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
He said, those people would benefit from clubhouses. I said, they sure would. He said, that's not my message to you, though. He said, that's not where most of us are. Most of us aren't on the street corners and highly visible. Most of us are at home in our mother's basement, drinking coffee and watching TV all day and afraid to come out. Those are the folks we have to reach.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Those are the people who need to know about Clubhouse and benefit from those. And that's what Clubhouse is trying to do, is trying to reach all those people.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I would encourage people to go to our website and look at Clubhouse International and see what we do. There's a directory there. Look for a clubhouse in your community. And there's opportunities for you to assure people who you know might benefit from a clubhouse. Go for a tour yourself. See what the clubhouse is all about. Clubhouses love to give tours.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Maybe volunteer and join the local board or advisory board. There are a lot of things you can do. We have different advocacy actions all year long. You can get involved with us that way. We know everybody has a connection to mental illness, whether it's themselves, their family, their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers, their roommates.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I'd encourage you to get involved, learn about what a clubhouse can deliver. And maybe the most important thing to remember is people living without mental illness are in fact people with all the same dreams and needs and wants. and the potential to recover and rebuild a personally satisfied, engaged, involved, contributing life in the local community is there.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Clubhouses provide a reasonable accommodation for people with mental illness, which is over-the-top support and repeated opportunities to succeed. I would encourage people to get to know us a little bit better.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
So the clubhouse is this place where people who are typically not welcomed in other places are not only welcomed, but they're welcomed and needed and given repeated opportunities to participate, to engage with others. to rebuild social networks. But the clubhouse, it's more than that. It's an opportunity system. So people, when they come to us, they're usually not at their best.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Tony, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about it. If I could tell you anymore, introduce you to Clubhouse, I'd love you now.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
They're usually been dealing with the difficulties of mental illness in many different ways. And when they come to us, they're looking for help or they're looking for a place to be safe and welcomed. And we provide that. That's really important.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Beyond that, the clubhouse provides so many opportunities that help people rebuild their lives. First and foremost, it's a comfortable place to be. You can come in and just have a cup of coffee if you want to, just talk to somebody, or just sit if you want to. You can also get help accessing needed services, health care, mental health care, social services.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
While the clubhouse doesn't provide any kind of a treatment or clinical services, it certainly helps clients community helps each member. That's what we call people who come to Clubhouse as members.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Helps each member access any kind of healthcare or social services they need, whether that's finding a psychiatrist or a therapist, or maybe it's getting primary care physician or getting access to housing. You can get that kind of help in a Clubhouse. In addition to that, the clubhouse, again, is a community of people. So when you bring people together, there's a lot of work to do.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
You have to answer the phones. You have to keep the place clean. You have to feed people. You have to plan and organize everything. So there's always work to be done in a clubhouse. So members are given the opportunity to participate in that work as much as they want to or as little as they want to.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Many times people living with mental illness are happy to be given the opportunity to contribute to others or to an organization again. That's an important part of coming and belonging somewhere.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Even beyond that, the clubhouse has this opportunity system that helps people return to education, whether that be basic adult education, college, university, certificate, degree or advanced degree program. Whatever the person's goals are, the clubhouse will support that person both at the clubhouse or on campus if needed and wanted.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
In addition to that, the clubhouse has an extraordinary employment program. People living with mental illness in this country, the unemployment rate is about 85% or 15% of people living with mental illness are employed.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
At our clubhouses, about 40% of the people who participate at a clubhouse each day are employed in jobs in the community, integrated into businesses with all kinds of employers, pay the prevailing wage, and are given the opportunity to start to build a career and to do things that they want again. And that's important to a lot of people living with mental illness.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
If you talk to folks, one of the top two or three life goals is usually, I want to have a job where I'm getting paid, where I can contribute, where I can do something important. And so clubhouses have aggressive and successful employment program. There's also an evening weekend social program to help people rebuild social connections.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
When your life gets disrupted by mental illness, you often lose your friends and your family and your connections. Far too often people are alone, living in an apartment alone or living at home with their parents and not able to come out and participate in the world. So having that social network again is really important. So Tony, when you say, what do we do?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
We provide this over the top support for people living with mental illness and give them repeated opportunities to build success and to recover. And we do it in a way where we're sharing the work. There's a small professional staff that works at clubhouses, but they work as colleagues.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
with members, and members of the clubhouse, people living with mental illness, are involved in every aspect of it. That shared work is what we think is restorative, and that's the crux of what our program is, being part of something with other people and contributing to the success of the group while at the same time building success for yourself.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
That's a great question. The clubhouse started in 1948, so over 75 years ago, in Manhattan. With a single clubhouse, a group of people who had been released from a state psychiatric hospital began to gather in New York City where they lived. They recognized each other in the hospital, and they formed an organization to help each other.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
They didn't want it to sound like a psychiatric program and get the stigma associated with that, so they called it the Juana Society, W-A-N-A, and that stood for We Are Not Alone. And the concept was we're stronger and more likely to build success when we're working together rather than going in alone.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
They formed this club, this society, which eventually, with the help of some wealthy volunteers who were committed to helping this group of people, they bought a building that had a fountain in the backyard and they renamed themselves Fountain House. Falcon House was the first clubhouse operating on 47th Street in Hatton, and it's still there today. Very successful.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
It's the model for all other clubhouses. That's how it started. It grew over 30 years and then began to get the attention of other mental health advocates, both public and private, and began a training program. that was funded by the U.S. government, the National Institute for Mental Health, and began to train other organizations and states and then eventually outside the country.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
When the clubhouses began to be successful and grew, it was time to create a second organization. So Fountainhouse, together with some of the other clubhouses, created what is now Clubhouse International.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Today, there are 377 clubhouses in 32 countries on all six continents, across six continents, I should say. There are about 220 in the United States and another 150 outside the United States.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
The answer to that is yes. The clubhouse model of psychosocial rehabilitation is a very specific model. Although the word clubhouse is general and lots of programs or organizations might say club or clubhouse, the clubhouse model is very specific. It's been developed and organized and improved over 75 years. The clubhouse operate on the basis of 37 organizations.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
best practice standards the international standards for clubhouse programs and these programs these standards describe how we work with each other how we treat each other what the opportunity system is in a clubhouse how clubhouses are structured how clubhouses are governed what the business of a clubhouse is and so these 37 best practice standards were consensually developed by clubhouses
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Meaning members, people living with mental illness, staff, people who volunteer on boards. These standards were developed and they're updated every two years. A rather cumbersome but important process of seeking consensus about what are the best practices. And they were first promulgated back in 1989 and have been updated every two years since then.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Clubhouses are trained on the basis of these standards and evaluated on the basis of these standards. If you go to any clubhouse in the world, you'll find the standards posted on the wall or on the tables or part of the meetings where people are talking about them all the time. For example, the first standard clubhouse membership is a voluntary and without time limits.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
When someone becomes a member of a clubhouse, they do it because they want to. You can't get too sick or too healthy to be a member of a clubhouse. Once you have a clubhouse, you can always use that clubhouse. And people do. They use it a lot when they need it most, and they use it less when they don't need it so much.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
There's a clubhouse in Worcester, Massachusetts called the Genesis Club. And they started saying a number of years ago, they said, we have wide doors to come in, but we have even wider doors to go out. And that's a simple answer to your question. At clubhouses, it's intentionally very simple and straightforward to become a member. There's no testing. There's no assessments.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
You don't have to earn your way into a clubhouse. You don't have to get the permission of anybody or any program or anything. If you have a history of mental illness, you're welcomed into the clubhouse. So members come to the clubhouse in many different ways. Some members are referred by a medical professional, a psychiatrist or a therapist or a
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
a primary care doctor, some by social workers or case managers or school disability offices. And many members are self-referred in what you can do to come to a clubhouse. And it's typically someone else who had the benefit of the clubhouse would tell her about it. When someone comes to the clubhouse, they might email, they might come
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
knock on the front door they might call by telephone but they're invited to come for tour every clubhouse runs tours where they introduce people to how the clubhouse works they'll walk you through the clubhouse show you how it all works and if you have a history of mental illness and you're interested in being in a clubhouse typically you can become a clubhouse right away like that day or that week it's very easy there's not waiting lists typically at clubhouses and so someone just has to express an interest in being a member and have a history of mental illness
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
To answer your question about getting out, it's all voluntary. So you can leave anytime you want. You can participate as much or as little as you want to.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
But the systems that I was describing earlier, going back to school and finishing your education and building self-confidence again and developing a plan for what's next in terms of a career or family or where you want to live, the clubhouse helps with all of those things. The supported education program at a clubhouse is designed to meet people where they're at,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
learn what their goals are, and then help them access, whether it's financial help for school, whether it's finding the right school, the right major, getting through a tough class structure, seeking reasonable accommodation from the school if that's needed. The same thing is true in employment. Over-the-top support in many different ways to help members.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
find and return to employment and then be successful at employment and get on a career path if that's what they want. If someone has a real problem with homelessness and their housing being at risk, Clubhouse will get involved and help people get that stabilized and figure out what their goals are around the housing and help them achieve that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
So there are a lot of ways out of the Clubhouse in terms of getting back. The whole mission of Clubhouse is to help people live successfully as integrated and valued members of society.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Clubhouses are not residential programs, so nobody lives at the clubhouse. Clubhouses are very involved in helping members who need housing get that housing and keep it and improve it. So they'll run supporter department programs or work with other housing programs in the community if people need that kind of house. So put that aside.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
The residential stuff, there's a lot of help with it, but people don't live at the clubhouse. But that concept that you described of being able to use the clubhouse while you're going to college, the answer to that is yes. I think
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
about it like a health club a health club has all kinds of services there's cardio sometimes there's yoga sometimes there's a steam room there might be weight lifting or other kinds of stretching classes or any of those kind of things a lot of things you can do in a health club when you join you pick what you want to use and you might change your mind you might come to the clubhouse a lot and anytime you might go a lot because you want to or you might just go once in a while
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
You get to pick and choose how that works in your life. Members get to pick and choose how they use the clubhouse. As I said, when people first come, typically they're not at their best. It's pretty common for people to be really struggling and be separated and isolated and lonely. And sometimes people will use the clubhouse every day.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
People, when they go back to school, they may only come in a couple of times a week to check in with friends or get help with something. Or they may use the most clubhouses will have some kind of system to help with tutoring or studying. But the member will pick what works for them.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
Well, that's an interesting question. If you go to any clubhouse in the world, if you know what a clubhouse is and you walk into any clubhouse, you could go to one in Tokyo or Pristina, Kosovo or London or Detroit or Richmond, British Columbia, and you'd know that you were in a clubhouse because there's a lot of things that are very similar.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
But clubhouses might be in a large office-type building, a commercial building. They might be in an old Victorian building.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
home there are clubhouses that have purchased or leased buildings formerly used as firehouses or anything so it can be any kind of a building typically when you walk into a clubhouse there's going to be one or more people right there at a reception desk or reception area who are saying hi joel welcome welcome to clubhouse can i help you and that's for two reasons one is just to remind people that they are welcome there it's a place that they belong
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
But also it makes sure that the people who come through the door are people who get the help that they need, whether it's someone who's visiting and wants to learn about a clubhouse or someone who just wants to find out what's going on in that building or if it's a potential new member. So there's somebody right there at the door always who can help someone.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
And the clubhouse space is usually divided up into sort of the functions of that clubhouse, how that clubhouse is organizing. And oftentimes that has to do with size. Any clubhouse, you'll find a kitchen and a dining room, usually a commercial size kitchen, a clubhouse that has commercial appliances and those kind of things, the average daily attendance at a clubhouse.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
I'm the director of the CEO of Clubhouse International. And Clubhouse International is an organization that is committed to ending isolation, both economic and social, for people living with mental illness, in particular people living with serious mental illness.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Joel Corcoran: Welcome, Needed, and Valued: The Clubhouse Approach
is around somewhere between 35 and 45 people a day. And some clubhouses have as many as 300 people a day, and some clubhouses have as few as 10 or 15 people a day, depending on the community and the size of the community and the age of the clubhouse. At every clubhouse, you're bringing people together so there's food service and so there's a kitchen and a dining room.