The Tools of Recovery

Addressing the Need to Know What Works and What Doesn't.

The Verrazano Foundation Spearheads Charter School Planning

VF President Ken Byalin with Hughes Hubbard attornies Tom Furst, Teresa Delany, Eduardo Vidal, Perla Kuhn,and Arinze Ike. Photo coutesy of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

The John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School provides a rigorous college preparatory education that equips and empowers students to go to college and succeed in life. Lavelle Prep welcomes all students, including those living with emotional disabilities. Full integration in all classes and activities enables each student to develop the academic skills, emotional fluency and confidence required to be successful students today and thoughtful, open-minded leaders tomorrow. Lavelle Prep has high expectations and unique benefits for all of its students. This includes an outstanding college prep program, small class sizes, superior educational technology and instruction, a visual and performing arts curriculum, a Wellness curriculum that addresses students’ emotional and social needs, and an environment that breaks down barriers and promotes understanding, acceptance and growth. Lavelle Prep fully integrates students living with mental or emotional illness through dually certified teachers, supported by school assistants who follow students through all of their classes and work with students individually as necessary. All students benefit from a behavioral management system.

About Tools of Recovery

Like the rest of The Verrazano Foundation website, the Tools of Recovery will become whatever the recovery movement makes of it.

We hope that people living with mental illness, consumers of mental health services and their families, will share the news of what works and what doesn't. We are particularly interested in providing news of non-traditional, peer-based service systems.

We hope that providers will also utilize this page to share techniques and practices, ways of serving individuals and families, and ways of structuring the delivery of service. We are cognizant, however, that professionals have often advocated solutions which have not been helpful. So we will ask that professionals provide us with telephone access to three consumers so that we can include consumer testimony.

One tool which we think has great promise is what we will call "bearing witness." We hope that people living with mental illness -- those with diagnoses as well as their families - will use this section to tell their stories. We believe that these voices can be crucial in breaking the silence which feeds the cycle of stigma and shame.

We hope that the Tools of Recovery will serve both providers and consumers of mental health services, although we know that other venues address their information needs. We hope especially that the Tools of Recovery will serve the need for information of the small but growing army of lay people supporting the movement for the rights of people living with mental illness and their inclusion at the table of society.

Please send tools stories to tools@verrazanofoundation.org

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