Goal Time: We are adding several offerings to our short informal 20-30 minute Goal Time period.  Goal Time is when clients can work on individual rehabilitation goals or meet one-on-one with their rehabilitation counselors.  Increasingly, its also becoming a short period for client-run clubs and very small special interest classes that staff are especially enthusiastic about but which would not generate enough client participation for our formal class schedule:

• Goal Time — Connections:  Liz Tutino is running a new program twice per week with our young adults.   It is geared towards youth issues and interests (most members are early middle age) and emphasizes social skills and even occasional dating concerns.

• Goal Time — 50 and Over:  Wanda Moore is getting together with our seniors (roughly age 50 or so) who enjoy a slower pace, classic movies and music, puzzles, and mature company.

• Goal Time — Spanish Club: Intern Katia Rudolph (with staff oversight and a strong assist from Ann) is taking over Spanish Club from departing intern Angelica and promises to carry on the language acquisition gains of this past spring as well as provide a bit of Hispanic culture for our clients.

• Goal Time — Sign Language:  Intern Courtnee Wright (with staff oversight) is testing out interest in a Sign Language Club this month and hopes to add more culture and learning to our environment.

Classes:  Our biggest change is the test implementation of a quarterly registration system.  Clients have been asked to register for one class for each day they attend and committ to it through the end of August.  This has the advantage of allowing teachers to try and go into more depth in given subjects since the same people will be in the room weekly.  It also helps with class size balancing.  We will evaluate how well this works going forwards.  Counselors in conjunction with clients can waive requirements on an as-needed basis (like letting a client switch classes).

Our other big change is the addition of team meetings.  Each counselor has one class period per week in which they meet with their own case load.  This is an opportunity for the counselor to efficiently address the same issue occuring across several clients all at once.  Teams may evolve into a friendly competition, a team-building experience, a smaller homebase group of peers for newer clients to relate to, etc.  We’ll also monitor how this initiative fares.

Other smaller class schedule changes include the conclusion of Michael’s long-running Emotional Management/Anger Control Training class, the addition of a Wellness Self Mangement class run by Liz, and a Leisure skills class run by Jeff.  Michael will be taking over Psychology 101 and moving it to Fridays.

– Michael

Courtnee Wright

Courtnee Wright is currently a senior psychology major and African-American Studies minor at The College of New Jersey. After graduation Courtnee plans to work towards a Master’s in Social Work or a Psychology Doctoral program.   She has useful past experience in residential counseling, mentoring and tutoring students, and community awareness building and public relations around health and social concerns.   She has volunteered with the National Council of Negro Women and Planned Parenthood.

Katia Rudolph is a University of Baltimore psychology student with certifications in CPR, First Aid,

Katia Rudolph

and Portuguese/English translation.  She is also fluent in Spanish.  Katia brings with her experience as a substitute teacher, counseling and teaching experience as an intern in children’s psychiatric health, and work organizing activities for the elderly.  She has volunteered with Big Brothers and Big Sisters, as well as with the Social Medical Service in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

We are very happy to have them both working with us this summer.

Elysia Amoroso

just graduated from the University of Baltimore and were here in order to complete their capstone senior projects in psychology.  Angelica is off to accumulate more medical internship hours towards an eventual career as a physican’s assistant.  Elysia is taking a short break to travel and then will likely be moving on to graduate school for clinical health psychology.

Both women spent more time with our PRP than their school internships required and both were highly valuable.  They helped out on trips, assisted with class-time activities, provided extra eyes and ears on our recent Aquarium trip, and jointly ran a Friday morning Spanish club that several clients

Angelica Amaya-Boyd

found interesting.  Spanish language resources are surprisingly difficult to come by in Harford County and they were especially useful with our few Hispanic clients.  Elysia and Angelica were required by their school to write research papers with literature reviews as part of their internship, and so deeply integrated both academic and hands-on knowledge.

Both have been highly active in, and officers of, their school’s chapter of Psi Chi — The International Honor Society in Psychology.

We wish them much luck and success in their future endeavors!

The idea of providing public recognition and privledges for goal completion has worked well in the past.  We are hoping to tie into the excitement of the Summer Olympics and also use this as a tool to increase client awareness of new events and help them stay excited about going-on in the world around them.

At the end of December clients were recognized for the completion of rehabilitation goals during the past year.  Each month the individual who completed a goal was awarded a paper brick with their name on it.  This symbolized their “Recovery at Work” – the theme for 2011.  As a group 117 goals were completed.  Several clients completed 4 goals each!  These achievements were celebrated with noisemakers and sparkling grape juice.  One of the clients said a toast for the group.

In early November Brenda Merrill and Liz Tutino attended a lecture on Art and Addiction at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.  The lecture was presented by Dr. Jack Henningfield, PhD, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Patricia B. Santora, PhD a Senior Public Health Advisor at the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.  The presenters described their Innovators Program which was developed to educate, prevent, and control substance abuse through art. Many moving pieces of art were displayed and it was clear that using art in substance abuse education captures the intense emotions of those who have family members with substance abuse issues or are substance abusers. Key Point has purchased a copy of their book Art &Addiction for use in MISA classes.

Key Point had a community Thanksgiving on November 23^rd.  Mountain Christian Church very generously donated funds so that a traditional Thanksgiving meal could be catered by Bob Evans.  All the clients had their fill of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy.  To contribute to this holiday meal clients went shopping on Tuesday and purchased cranberry sauce, apple cider, pies, and whipped topping.  During the month of November clients were daily encouraged to write down one thing they were thankful for.  The items were written on a piece of paper and a “Gratitude Chain” was hung for all to see.  Each day the chain grew a little longer and during the Thanksgiving celebration all the clients read one of the strips of paper.  Many clients then stood and expressed what they were thankful for.

By Liz Tutino

Early on October 20 clients went to Brad’s Produce in Churchville for a hayride.  It was a gorgeous fall day to pick pumpkins and everyone enjoyed the bumpy hayride through the fields.  For one client this was the first hayride she had ever been on and for another client being on the farm reminded him of happy memories of when he worked on a farm.  Everyone picked a small pumpkin and several clients decorated their pumpkins as centerpieces for our tables in the community room.

Our Advisory Board was very active planning the Halloween party and the monthly off-site trip calendar.  This committee typically involves ten or more clients.  Client participation is always encouraged and the PRP has quite a few clients with excellent communication and leadership skills which they utilize on this committee.  Many people wore costumes for the Halloween party including members of the ACHIEVE research study from Johns Hopkins – they were a hit as Batman and Robin.

On October 28^th Dr. Lynn Yukofski, a local podiatrist, came to Key Point to offer on-site podiatry services.  7 clients met with Dr. Lynn and reported how great their feet felt after seeing her.  Dr. Lynn provided education on foot care, trimmed nails, addressed calluses, and offered education on diabetic foot care. She also wrote a prescription for one client and provided a brace for another.  The client who received the brace commented that “it is helping tremendously, especially when I exercise.”  The PRP is planning for Dr. Lynn to come on a regular basis.

The PRP welcomes Wanda Moore as our new Kitchen Manager.  Wanda has had many roles at Harford PRP including van driver and counselor and party planner.  In addition to overseeing the kitchen and serving breakfast and lunch Wanda supervises 15 Key Point clients who work at the PRP as dishwashers, servers, and cleaners.  Key Point offers these vocational opportunities to help clients build skills so they can work in the community.

Monika Butke participated in two seminars at Sheppard Pratt.  One lecture was on “How to Talk about Spirituality” with your clients and the second one was on nicotine addiction.  Monika shared the material in the nicotine addiction seminar with clients in her MISA class. They had an interesting conversation on the effects of nicotine on the prepubescent brain and how that may affect mental illness.

It has several advantages:

• Several small Goal Time activities — many of them client-run — including Spanish club, women’s club, and men’s club
• Qigong 2x per week through the end of August
• 3 to 4 concurrent afternoon classes almost every day of the week
• New “Life After Diagnosis”, “Crossword Crew”, and “Current Events” classes

It’s a happening schedule — lots of activity right now.

– Michael