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Organization: Mental Health Commission of Canada
Publication Date: 2011
This report presents the overall findings emanating from the planning and proposal development phase of the At Home/Chez Soi project. This pan Canadian project is funded by the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) . It is a five-year research demonstration project exploring ways to help the growing number of homeless people who have a mental illness. It builds on existing evidence and knowledge and applies it in Canadian settings to learn...
Organization: Mental Health Commission of Canada
Publication Date: 2010
This research is an examination of the conception of the national Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) demonstration project, “At Home/Chez Soi.” The purpose is to uncover the origins of this demonstration project. This research should be valuable in elucidating how innovative, large-scale demonstration projects come into being. No previous research has examined the origins of Housing First research projects in different jurisdictions, even...
Organization: Mental Health Commission of Canada
Publication Date: 2012
This report presents a synthesis of the findings of the baseline consumer narrative interviews collected for the At Home/Chez Soi project1. This pan Canadian project, which is funded by the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), is a five-year research demonstration study exploring interventions for homeless adults who have mental illnesses. At Home/Chez Soi applies evidence-based interventions in the Canadian context to better understand whi...
Publication Date: 2013
An interesting question concerns how large-scale (mental) health services policy initiatives come into being, and the role of evidence within the decision-making process behind their origins. This paper illustrates the process by which motivation to address homelessness, in the context of the upcoming 2010 Vancouver Olympics, was leveraged into a pan-Canadian project including sites in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Moncton, New Bruns...
Publication Date: 2012
This research focused on the relationships between a national team and five project sites across Canada in planning a complex, community intervention for homeless people with mental illness called At Home/Chez Soi, which is based on the Housing First model. The research addressed two questions: (a) what are the challenges in planning? and (b) what factors that helped or hindered moving project planning forward? Using qualitative methods, 149 nati...
Publication Date: 2003
As part of a participatory action research project, we surveyed 300 psychiatric consumers/survivors from southwestern Ontario regarding their housing preferences and housing satisfaction. We found that, while 79% of the sample preferred independent living, 76% were living in some other type of setting (e.g., temporary shelter, supportive housing, sheltered care). Those living in temporary shelters reported the lowest levels of housing satisfactio...
Publication Date: 1999
In this paper, we review the literature on housing for psychiatric consumer/survivors since the publication of the Nelson and Smith Fowler (1987) review more than a decade ago. First, we review research and propose a definition to contrast key features of three approaches to housing: (a) custodial, (b) supportive, and (c) supported. Second, we examine studies of the relationships between the characteristics of housing and adaptational outcomes fo...
Publication Date: 2010
With the advent of deinstitutionalization in the 1960s, people with serious mental illness (SMI) have become increasingly at risk of becoming homeless, living in poor quality housing, and languishing in the community (Rochefort, 1993). Since this time, a variety of housing approaches for this population have been developed, implemented, and evaluated. In the past 10 years alone (since 1999), there have been at least 13 reviews of this research li...
Publication Date: 2007
This article contrasts values associated with the delivery of housing programs for people with serious mental illness with the typical topics pertaining to housing that are studied by researchers. Six values were identified through a search and content analysis of the literature on housing for people with serious mental illness. A second review of the literature was conducted to identify research on housing for this population. A comparison of fi...
Publication Date: 2007
A review of 16 controlled outcome evaluations of housing and support interventions for people with mental illness who have been homeless revealed significant reductions in homelessness and hospitalization and improvements in other outcomes (e.g., well-being) resulting from programs that provided permanent housing and support, assertive community treatment (ACT), and intensive case management (ICM). The best outcomes for housing stability were fou...
Publication Date: 2006
It is important to understand housing and mental health issues from the perspective of psychiatric survivors. This paper reports findings from a series of focus group meetings held with survivors of mental illness to address issues concerning housing preferences and housing needs.
Publication Date: 2007
This article describes recent work to support recommendations for improving Ontario's system of housing for people with serious mental illness. This multifaceted project engaged stakeholders in discussions concerning strategies for improving the system based on (a) values that underlie housing programs, (b) evidence of effective housing practices, (c) the current status of the system, and (d) international practices for monitoring community menta...
Publication Date: 2007
This research examined two premises of supported housing: (a) that consumer choice/control over housing and support and the quality of housing are important contributors to the subjective quality of life and adaptation to community living of people with mental illness, and (b) that apartments provide mental health consumers with more choice/control over housing and support than group living arrangements. To test these two hypotheses, we collected...