Accession 2009.016

Craig Fees

Notice of Annual Forum of Community and Communities, 27/03/2009

Accession 2009.004

John Lyward

George Lyward - His Autobiography

Accession 2008.057

D.J. Goddard

Photographs relating to Bodenham Manor School c.1937-1984

I am just handling accession 2007.053, from the late Richard Crocket. In here is a photostat copy of a letter from Lois Danton at Herrick Memorial Hospital, Berkeley, CA to Bernard Sklar MD in England, dated February 9th, 1972.

Lois Danton notes that the term "therapeutic community" is used loosely in the States; that the Maxwell Jones model "is often given lip service"; and that most places would be more "therapeutic milieu" than  "community".

From her research, she thinks the following "are indeed therapeutic communities":

Fort Logan Mental Health Center, Denver, Colorado
High Point Hospital, Poert Chester, New York
Psychiatric Inpatient Service, Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut
Research Division Ward, Manhattan State Hospital, Ward's Island, New York.

She's less certain about:

Southeastern Psychiatric Unit, Colorado State Hospital, Pueblo, Colorado
Temple University Community Mental Health Center, Partial Hospitalization Services, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Illinois State Psychiatric Instittue, Chicago, Illinois

"and maybe"

U.S. Naval Hospital Psychiatric Unit, Newport, Rhode Island
Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury, Vermont.

She noted a recent advertisement from The Good Samaritan Hospital, San Jose, California, for a "Psychiatric Director for 24-bed Therapeutic Community Hospital", and as a post script added: "Also: The Bronx State Hospital, New York City, 'all 40 wards operate as therapeutic communities'."

Fascinating

Teresa von Sommaruga Howard and Russian workers feature in latest addition to the RadioTC International Series, "Who's Dropped in to the Archive and Study Centre?"

Archivist Craig Fees took advantage of the recent joint Mulberry Bush Training/PETT residential course to interview MASHA PICHUGINA  and MARIA KRIVENKOVA. Twenty-two year old Masha grew up in Kitezh - the eco-village/therapeutic community established in Russia in 1992 to live and work with orphaned, abused and abandoned children - and is now head of Kitezh's new sister therapeutic community, Orion.  Maria is a teacher and foster mother in Kitezh. The 14 minute interview in English and Russian describes their experience, and invites volunteers to come and help to build and support the communities. The Kitezh web-site is www.kitezh.org. To listen to the interview, click here.

TERESA von SOMMARUGA HOWARD conducted the large groups, and took time from the Mulberry Bush Training/Planned Environment Therapy Trust residential course "A Living Learning Experience - An Introduction to Therapeutic Child Care" to record a frank and intimate interview about her life and career: A life and career which has included "therapeutic community outside the therapeutic community" work in a London "sink" estate, turning environment and relationships around as a local authority architect; childhood emigration to New Zealand, with a German refugee father and English mother; a staff team consultancy at the Henderson Hospital as a group analyst, bridging the transition from Stuart Whiteley to Kingsley Norton as the Hospital's Director; and a road of personal discovery, over a landscape blown apart by two world wars over several continents. And much more. Recorded live in the Archivist's office, to listen to her interview, click here.

Earlier Drop-ins

Earlier "Drop-ins" have included MIKE PEGG, Director of the Richmond Fellowship's Lancaster House therapeutic community in the early 1970s, now a successful Mentor to major corporations (Sony, Microsoft/MSN - see his blog at http://thestrengthsway.blogspot.com/);  JANICE JONES, Executive Officer of the Australasian Therapeutic Communities Association (ATCA); and DR. TONY REES, co-author of the iconic Aitken, Webster and Rees (1958), "Magnetic Prospecting", Antiquity 32, pp. 270-271, and (incidentally) donor of the archives of Frank Mathews and of the Birmingham Society for the Care of Invalid and Nervous Children. For a full list of Drop-ins, go to http://www.tc-of.org.uk/wiki/index.php/P3S0