Community Wellness Centers (Self-Help Centers)
The Division of Mental Health and Addictions (DMHAS) currently funds and supports 30 Community Wellness Centers in the 21 counties across the state, all of which are consumer-operated and provide dedicated space for mental health consumers to grow in their recovery through self-help, socialization, peer support, opportunities for employment, and specialized wellness programs. During the last several years, all of the Community Wellness Centers in New Jersey have successfully incorporated significant changes as the Wellness and Recovery model has become an integral part of the overall mission and is being used more actively to inform the service delivery model.
New Jersey Centers now provide a variety of activities provided both at the Center itself and off-site. The Centers offer their membership the opportunity to receive support and services such as: peer support, mutual aid support groups, self-esteem building, Cultural competency and diversity activities; including learning a foreign language, at some centers. The consumers are offered support to develop their wellness resources like PADs (Psychiatric Advance Directives) development of their WRAP plan (M.E. Copeland's model of a Wellness and Recovery Action Plan); a variety of resources for consumers who are dually-diagnosed, mobile community outreach, learning to budget, individual savings or financial planning, exercise, walking clubs, dance, yoga, healthy eating and cooking, Hearing Voices Groups, camping trips, shopping activities, sharing meals, meal planning, budgeting, selecting healthy snack alternatives, some faith-based satellite services, certified individual peer wellness coaching, WRAP scrap-booking, smoking cessation groups, movie night,, crafts and game night. Other activities include topics like conflict resolution, men's and women's group, meditation and relaxation groups, preparing for education and employment opportunities, supportive employment groups, and many more.
There are full time Center Managers at every Wellness center, which has proven to be a stabilizing force for change and growth at the centers. These center managers are required to accept a great deal of responsibility for the well-being of the membership, yet the retention rate for the position is impressively high. This is primarily due to the DMHAS funded Self-Help Leadership Training Academy and to the support and skills of the full-time Life Coach who was hired to assist the Center Managers in performing their duties by providing them with supportive counseling, mentoring and training necessary to handle the stresses associated with the demands of a management position. The centers have vans and transport individuals to and from the center, as well as to sporting and theater performances, community meetings and shopping excursions. Consumers are assisted in daily living skills, if needed, as well as independent living skills. If an individual desires, there are volunteer positions at the centers, through which the members learn sanitary food handling, how to prepare and plan their meals, what to do for general kitchen clean-up, how to properly sanitize the kitchen, including, how to properly store and dispose of trash and kitchen cleaning products, storage of food items, and kitchen ware.
A listing of the SELF-HELP CENTERS (SHC) /COMMUNITY WELLNESS CENTERS can be found Here
