Urban Farm Roof Deck Garden Revitalization

Our Urban Farm Roof Deck garden revitalization project is underway. Along with our 2 urban farms located at our residences in the Bronx and the Upper East Side of Manhattan, we also have a thriving roof deck garden at our headquarters on the Upper West Side. With the start of Spring, we are preparing our outdoor spaces for flowers, trees and beautiful colors.

On our roof deck garden we are upgrading planter boxes and benches. We will begin planting flowers and trees as soon as the weather stays warm. Currently Bridge horticulture workers maintain the roof deck garden; they help with new plantings and regular watering during the season. This year we plan to add an area for growing herbs. We will use the herbs in The Bridge food program and in cooking classes we offer to clients.   
 


The roof deck garden was started in 2005 with an initial grant from The Burpee Foundation, the founding donor of The Bridge Horticulture Training Program. The program is a unique community partnership with the Horticultural Society of New York (HSNY). Additional support from The Burpee Foundation this year will help continue the roof deck garden, which can encourage new Bridge horticulture interns to get involved. The program offers clients work training, stipends, and an important opportunity to be productive, active and is therapeutic.

In June we will honor George Ball, President of the W. Atlee Burpee Company and The Burpee Foundation, for his outstanding support for this important program. The horticultural training program that was started on the roof deck garden has grown each year with private support and now includes two urban farms.

The Bridge as a Social Work Agency

While Social Work Month has passed, we continue to celebrate The Bridge as a social work agency. On April 14th at 3:30pm, The Bridge will be hosting an afternoon reception honoring Rory Gilbert, LMSW,  the Director of Community Mental Health and Case Management Programs, as a Bridge Social Worker of Distinction, along with the entire PROS staff. We are also very excited to have the distinguished Merril Rotter, MD as the featured speaker. Dr. Rotter is a leading expert on providing mental health services to men and women who have serious mental illness and who have been in the criminal justice system. Dr. Rotter will be giving a talk on the topic of “Today’s Clients: Challenges From A to Z.”

The Bridge highly values the work that our social workers do every day to help clients lead better and more independent lives. Please contact Denise Gutierrez at dgutierrez@thebridgeny.org to attend this event. The event will be held at our headquarters:
248 West 108th Street, NYC

William F. Ryan Health Center at The Bridge

We have made healthcare a priority with the William F. Ryan Health Center at The Bridge. Because the mental health system does not pay for medical services, we’ve had quite an adventure providing medical services to our clients.

More than 25 years ago, in recognition that it was simply inadequate to be treating just our clients’ mental health conditions while ignoring their medical needs, The Bridge conducted its first foray into healthcare. A friendly primary care doctor agreed to give ten randomly selected clients a full physical exam. The results were that more than 60 medical conditions were found in the ten clients.

For the past decade, we have had a remarkable partnership with the William F. Ryan Community Health Center, a Federally-Qualified Health Center, which operates an on-site medical clinic at The Bridge headquarters building. The clinic provides routine physicals, follow-up and monitoring of clients’ chronic health conditions and emergency walk-in services. The Ryan operation is funded by Medicaid and a Federal grant; The Bridge provides free space for the clinic. The partnership entails close cooperation between Bridge and Ryan staff to provide truly integrated health services.

Hundreds of Bridge clients use the Ryan Center clinic each year, avoiding emergency rooms and fragmented hospital-based care, and benefiting from a collaboration that provides accessible, high quality health care that is integrated with our own mental health and substance abuse services. The Bridge/Ryan partnership addresses a critical need of our clients in a way that is both creative and cost-effective.