The Residential Intensive Support Team (RIST) is an intensive residential support program designed to address the needs of individuals who may require intensive but varying degrees of residential support in the transition from hospital to community living. Bridgeway's RIST programs are comprehensive, flexible, mobile teams skilled in state of the art interventions that provides person centered recovery and wellness services to people re-entering the community from a psychiatric hospital. RIST, as a housing model, supports individuals' use of other community mental health treatment, employment and rehabilitation services, as appropriate.

Services Include:

• Assistance in locating permanent housing utilizing state subsidized rental assistance vouchers.
• Assessment of individual's needs, strengths, and resources in order to assist in development of wellness and recovery goals.
• Personal assistance approach with emphasis on education and development of living skills, including apartment management, nutrition, budgeting, personal hygiene, housekeeping, and medication management.
• Intensive outreach to engage service recipients into mental health, substance abuse, and medical services.
• Structured, on-going coordination with other service providers.
• 24 hours per day/7 days per week availability of staff when needed and 24 hour on-call rapid response.
• Assistance in developing peer and community social supports.
• Partnership with family/significant others.
• Career counseling, job seeking skills training and ongoing support to workers and students.
• A clinically enhanced residential support staff, with a strong peer role, inclusive of a consulting psychiatrist, wellness nurse, housing specialist, and MICA and vocational counselors.

The Goals of RIST include:

Independent living integrated within the community; preventing unnecessary hospitalizations; enhancing the persons quality of life and achieving goals such as:

• Paid work
• Continuing education
• Supportive network of friends
• Improved family relations
• Living alcohol and drug free
• Increased recreational opportunities

Provision of Best Practices:

• IMR
• WRAP
• Supported Employment
• Health Literacy
• Supported Education
• Co-Occurring Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment

Eligibility:

Candidates must be diagnosed with one of the following psychiatric diagnoses:

• Referrals accepted from state and county hospitals
• Presence of a major DSM Axis I psychiatric illness
• Need for intensive support in order to maintain independent living