Profiles of Success: Ronnie Smith

Ronnie Smith came to The Bridge in 1998. He is a PROS client and has been in Bridge housing for 7 years. Recently, The Bridge Vocational Services was able to place Ronnie in a security job at a major retail store where he has worked for over 2 months now, 5 days a week.

Ronnie has always wanted to work. He has had some of his best times at The Bridge working, meeting people and making friends. Ronnie noted, “vocational services has helped me identify my job skills, and my favorite part has been getting to know lots of people.”

Ronnie is a fully licensed security guard now and is looking forward to getting his license renewed and continuing the work he enjoys so much. The Bridge Vocational Services will continue to give him support and training as his career progresses.

PROS 1 Year Anniversary at The Bridge

Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) program at The Bridge just turned 1 year old! We celebrated yesterday in the cafeteria of our headquarters with a packed house of clients and staff and plenty of ice cream.

PROS participants took turns at the podium and highlighted what they liked about the PROS program. Certificates of Completion were given out to 22 clients that have completed the Cognitive Remediation Program. This program is designed as a behavioral treatment that uses various mental exercises to facilitate improvement in targeted areas like memory, attention, processing speed and problem solving. A client said that after completing the Cognitive Remediation Program, he can pay attention better to the teacher in school, and has also become a better worker. Another client said that the Cognitive Remediation program had helped her in her job in the mailroom with multi-tasking and she can maintain the different parts of her job better.

Graduates of the Wellness Self Management Program also received certificates. This is a program where clients go through modules that work on coping skills, symptom management, physical and mental stability. One graduate of the program said it helped him to look on the brighter side of things.

We are celebrating Recovery Month all September long, and want to thank everyone who made this event possible.

PROS Client Talent Show

This past Friday, the summer staff put on a Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) client talent show to conclude their time at The Bridge. The show went off without a hitch to a fully packed house, and the talents on display were truly impressive.

Every client in the show is in The Bridge PROS program. Most performances were songs and poems, with many being original compositions. Check out our pictures on Flickr and video of some of the rap, guitar and poetry performances on YouTube! All performers got a certificate of participation, and there was a prize raffle drawing at the end. Four lucky winners got gift bags filled with groceries donated by Trader Joe's Markets, and another lucky two received Subway Restaurant gift cards.

Thank you again to all our amazing summer staff!

PROS Material

Check out our Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) flyer to find out more about PROS at The Bridge or give to a friend! You can read and download it below. 

Bridge PROS Program

View more documents from The Bridge

Columbia Social Work Students at The Bridge

Super Summer Workers (from left):

Jennifer Lehman, John S.H. Page, Jr, Dr. Peter Beitchman, Hillary Perlman, Alissa Sexton

Four graduate social work students from Columbia School of Social Work have joined The Bridge staff as summer workers. Energetic and full of enthusiasm, the Columbia team has been filling in for vacationing staff in our PROS Program (the rehab-focused recovery day program), leading groups (e.g. Wellness Self-Management, Coping Skills, Career Exploration, Social Skills) and providing individual services and support to PROS participants. They have also been enriching the summer by conducting trips to local cultural and recreational attractions and are planning two major agency activities in August: a client talent show and a picnic in Riverside Park, complete with a variety of sports activities and picnic games. Box lunches will be prepared by our own Upper Level Caterers, staffed by Bridge clients. The summer workers will be with us through the end of August, when it’s back to school for them to complete their graduate social work training. In our view, each of them has a very bright future in the profession.

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

Personalized Recovery Oriented Services Programs

Personalized Recovery Oriented Services Programs (PROS) is a recovery-oriented program for individuals with serious mental illness. The Bridge launched PROS on September 1st of this year. The goal of the program at The Bridge is to integrate rehabilitation services in a way that facilitates the participants’ abilities  to achieve their independent living goals.

In PROS,  participants first identify their own individual Life Role Goals. Once a participant’s goals are identified (in life domains including relationships, employment, housing, education, spiritual and leisure time activities), the next step is to identify the obstacles that must be overcome in order to achieve them. Participants then receive the tailored PROS services that are designed to address the obstacles and promote success in assuming the desired Life Roles.

Initial reaction to PROS at The Bridge has been uniformly positive. The structure of the program, which uses small groups for learning, allows for individualized services that maximize the opportunities for participants to make rapid progress in achieving their goals. We look forward to sharing the outcomes of this important new program. 

Outpatient Mental Health System

The New York outpatient mental health system has undergone some important changes recently because of the implementation of mental health clinic restructuring and Personalized Recovery Oriented Services Programs (PROS). PROS is the new services program that replaces Continuing Day Treatment (CDT) and other programs as the main outpatient rehabilitation program for people with mental illness.

In the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) New York City Chapter’s November issue of Currents, the implications of clinic restructuring and the implementation of Personalized Recovery Oriented Services Programs are explored by Peter Beitchman, DSW, LMSW, Executive Director of The Bridge. His article "Major Changes in NY’s Publicly-Funded Outpatient Mental Health System", is available now.