Community mental health clubhouses are once again fighting for their lives, and TOP members are leading the way.
At a lively rally on the City Hall steps in May, TOP members and staff joined four other clubhouses to talk about why it’s important for them to stay open. The programs were defunded last year when the Adams administration decided it would fund only large clubhouses. After months of lobbying, signature-gathering and talking to the media, some of the smaller clubhouses were saved at the eleventh hour by City Council, which announced an initiative to fund them for a year.
That year ends this month, and now the clubhouses are asking the Council to make their funding part of the annual budget.
“Clubhouses are communities and it’s difficult for the members to make progress if they’re worried their community will be broken up,” said TOP Program Director Tamar Mendelson. “We want to be in the budget so we can focus on what we do.”
Clubhouses help their members live their best lives by building a support network and gaining skills, education, jobs and housing. They have a regular schedule of activities and meetings, and members work alongside the staff to run the day-to-day operations. In a world that often stigmatizes and isolates people with mental illness, clubhouses bring them together.
“TOP is so important to me because it’s a home away from home—where I help out and feel needed. They’ve helped me get jobs and feel at home, and I have a lot of friends,” TOP member Charles De San Pedro told the crowd.
He went on to explain that he’d initially joined a large clubhouse, but found the number of people there “could overwhelm me.”
“When I was told that TOP was accepting new members and TOP was small, I thought TOP might be a great fit for me, and it definitely was,” he added.
“I personally have seen people who started in the clubhouse in the corner not doing anything but coloring, and then go on to become peer counselors, full-time workers and members of society,” said Life Links Clubhouse member Michael Petty, a retired chef. “That’s what the clubhouses are for. We don’t want this just to be a place to hang out. We want it to get us well. This is part of our recovery.”
City Council is currently working on its proposed budget for the next fiscal year and is expected to pass it by the end of June. TOP is grateful the advocacy of our council member, Gale Brewer, and Mental Health Chair Linda Lee. Both were essential in saving the clubhouses last year.
Want to help? Find the phone number for your city council member here and call to ask them to support funding for community mental health clubhouses.