Kyle S. was in a fragile state when our new Intensive Mobile Treatment team knocked on his door a few months ago. He was actively using substances, was not engaged in mental health treatment, and he didn’t think anyone could help.
“I didn’t have too much faith in anything,” he recalled, sitting in conference room at the IMT office with Program Director Zev Vel. “I mean, I’ve been in prison and I’ve been homeless. People just constantly promise things—to no avail. Even though they mean well, their hands are tied a lot of the time.”
His distrust began to thaw after IMT staff returned the next day. And the next. And the next: “I don’t know what Zev saw in me, but if it wasn’t him, it was somebody else that was there, every single day. I just needed somebody to be there.”
The IMT team includes case managers, a substance use specialist, peer specialists, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, a nurse, and administrators. They visit their clients wherever they are: at home, in homeless shelters, on the street, even in the subways.
“We’re able to go out into the community and see what it’s like in their homes—and if they’re unhoused, then maybe we’re seeing what it’s like on the corner that they stay on,” Vel explains. He adds that it’s a much richer experience than meeting in an office: “We really get a much better picture of who the person is.”
The team can prescribe, adjust, and administer medications. But they support clients in a number of other ways too, including counseling them, helping them get housing, supporting them to stay on top of tasks like cleaning and bill-paying, and even teaching them how to do laundry. Most importantly, they let the client guide the treatment process and set their own goals.
“For a lot of people, they just haven’t done these things for themselves in so long,” said Vel. “Or if people went through the foster system and then were unhoused directly afterwards, they may not have ever really experienced them. We give them a chance to set new goals and learn how to take the next step”
IMT is similar to an existing Goddard program called ACT—Assertive Community Treatment. Both provide mobile teams of specialists to help people with a history of mental health diagnoses live and thrive in the community. Some key differences are that IMT has a higher ratio of staff to clients, and that it is not Medicaid-funded, which allows it to provide a broader range of services.
As an IMT client, Kyle began taking medication to treat his drug use. He said that’s enabled him to stop using. He has begun to rebuild his sense of self. “I have a lot more confidence in myself than I did even a week ago, a month ago,” he said. “So I’m just grateful.”
Looking at the future—something that until recently was hard to do—he thinks he might like to become a peer counselor for others struggling with substance use. “In some capacity I want to be helping somebody, giving something back that was given to me,” he said. “I used to put that down, like that’s not for me—but it is for me. I love helping people.”