DROP-IN CENTER
What's a Drop-In Center all about? Most people don't really understand the whole concept. It is not intended to be a 'therapeutic community' in any classic sense. There are no medical doctors, no M.S.W.s, no psychiatrists. Those persons and professions are available at other places. They have very structured programs to help a client reach a specific goal.
The other side of the coin is a Drop-In Center, a non-traditional method of providing community services to emotionally disturbed residents. It offers an atmosphere for socialization and re-socialization. It helps meet the needs of the clients that would not necessarily be met in a structured, medical program. A Drop-In Center is a place where a client is free to choose what he or she wishes to do with their time; a place to be when it is cold and snowy, when it is hot and steamy, when it is a holiday and the library is closed and the churches are closed and the schools are closed; a place to have a hot lunch and hot dinner; an environment in which there is always a 'staff person' (or 5) on duty to provide a bit of counsel, to make referrals, to talk, to love at least a little. It's a place to learn skills for independent living. It could be the beginning of rehabilitation.
When RCM became the possessor of this great building in 1976, there was no clear plan for its use other than it would be put into use in response to community needs: physical, emotional, educational, social and spiritual.? A free hot lunch program had been initiated and it was noted that several participants had severe mental or emotional trauma as a piece of their story. Some of the luncheon guests were coming at 8 a.m. because there was no other place to go.
So staff was hired; space was prepared; food was gathered; table games were purchased; easy chairs were positioned in a carpeted room. It would be a little bit like home. It would be a city of refuge for harassed and hassled sheep in Chicago.
RCM Drop-In Center is staffed by a little team of neighbors and friends, ordinary people with extra-ordinary hearts, people like Mom and Dad and Cousin Joe. They eat together, talk together, play games together and enjoy each other. There is a broader community right here just like a 'normal neighborhood'. It's an integrated place; it's not a place where the deeply traumatized would only see other deeply traumatized. This is a broader community, a little bit like home. There is no name calling, no harassment, no put downs, no fighting. If you want to sit in the corner by yourself, that is OK; if you want to talk, that is OK; if you want to play chess or checkers, OK; watch TV, OK; have a rap session, OK; go on a group outing, OK. It is a people friendly Drop-In Center. And there is food.
The idea is that this city of refuge, this home away from home, would allow the hard-pressed, the hassled, to get back in the swing of things and thus keep them out of the hospital. In the words of Rev. Tony Van Zanten, ?The Drop-In Center is not seen as a garbage bin for the discards, but as a place where the healthy and unhealthy mingle to the advantage of both. Those who are about to fall off the edge are invited to come back in, sometimes by those who have been on the edge themselves, and sometimes by those who have never been close to the edge. 'The edge' itself, is, of course, a little difficult to define. Could it be that those who are ?healthy? may be the source of strength for the 'unhealthy'? Could it be that the 'healthy non-professionals', just real humans, are the reason that the Drop-In Center works? Graduates (prodigal sons and daughters coming to their senses) are able to pass the torch to others through deeds of love and mercy. This is a thing of great wonder! In the past 6 months, a dozen men and women who were alcohol and drug driven, have become free and self-sufficient.'
That is the idea behind the RCM Drop-In Center. Thousands of people have come and gone. Friendships have been forged and lives have been changed. (If only the bricks could talk) And it still happens today.
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