Reaching Out About Depression
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Linda
Last Name
McMaster
Website URL
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Reaching Out About Depression
Organization Website
Organization Phone
617 591 6909
Organization Address
230 Highland Avenue/ S.O.N. Room 604/ Somerville, MA 02143
Organization Country
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Your idea
Name Your Project
Reaching Out About Depression
Country your work focuses on
United States
Describe Your Idea
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Reaching Out About Depression (ROAD) was created by low-income women to address the complicated intersection of poverty and depression in their community. The traditional definition of depression places the locus of the problem within the person, which fails to address the profound impact of an individual’s context on her mental health. ROAD helps women to alleviate the symptoms of their depression and to address the social and economic inequalities that exacerbate their depression. All ROAD program areas are developed and delivered in the community by low-income women who are a part of that community
ROAD builds community on the strength of women’s shared experiences, enabling them to bypass the initial stigma of getting “professional” help and begin to define their mental health on their own terms and in their own words. By providing advocacy to help alleviate crises, ROAD is able to help women develop strategies to address the factors in their own lives and their communities that contribute to depression. And by creating opportunities for leadership and social action, ROAD provides an antidote to the helplessness women feel in the face of poverty and a sometimes flawed social service system.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
ROAD has created a strong community of mutual support among a diverse group of low-income women living in the Greater Boston Area. Women in the ROAD workshops report reduced depression and isolation as well as increased self-esteem and capacity for self-advocacy. The strong community ties created have resulted in myriad informal resource-sharing projects: sharing childcare, helping each other with household organization and trips to the grocery store, and providing emotional support during difficult times.
The advocacy component of ROAD has assisted families by successfully fighting evictions, helping advocate with health providers, organizing and reducing household chaos, debt management, emotional support, and much more.
The Leadership Development component has helped women who started attending the workshop as participants to learn to be program facilitators. Women involved in Leadership Development have successfully gone back to school, written grants, created safety plans, started their own knitting or writing groups, and participated in speaking engagements for the first time.
Social Action has included community education through art exhibits, lobbying at the Massachusetts Statehouse, creating and distributing a Social Action Guide to low-income community members, and training healthcare and social service providers about the intersections between poverty and depression.
Problem
Traditional treatment models usually address mental health without addressing the social and economic inequalities that exacerbate depression. Barriers such as cost, inadequate or prohibitively expensive childcare and transportation, racism, fear of stigma all impede women’s access to traditional support services. All too often, women’s experiences with helping services reinforce the cycle of stress, poverty and depression for them and their families. Low-income women spend a lot of time and energy securing and managing resources for themselves, their families, and their communities yet their skills and labors are not acknowledged or validated which increases feelings of helplessness.
Actions
ROAD has created and successfully implemented a 13-session workshop series on the intersection of poverty and depression. We are currently developing a second-level workshop series to address specific topics (such as grief, anger, self-care, etc) in greater depth. We are also working on the development of a curriculum for the children who attend ROAD with their mothers (currently we have childcare). We have created formal relationships with Harvard Law School and Boston College's school of Counseling/ Psychology in order to ensure clarity in the training and expectations of advocates. To support the continuing success of the program, we have developed and are working on a long-term fundraising plan that incorporates both grant-based and individual and event-based fundraising.
Results
The process of developing and delivering workshop curricula fosters leadership, understanding and connections among the women who facilitate the program and the women who attend the program as participants. Providing a second-level workshop will increase the knowledge, skills, confidences and coping strategies of the women who participate. The children's curriculum will allow us to more fully acknowledge and address the impact of parental depression, and give both the parents and the children the tools they need to communicate and cope with tough situations. The fundraising plan will allow us to continue to provide programming to women who rely on ROAD for support and to expand to meet the increasing demand we have experienced as traditional mental health services are being scaled back.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
In 2010, ROAD will continue to develop its long-term individual and event-based fundraising plan as well as seeking foundation support. The financial stability this provides will allow us to expand staffing to hire a second part-time staff person and support expansion of the Workshop Series by running two workshops simultaneously and expand the scope of our Leadership Development program. We will also continue to build relationships with service providers, and build relationships with local and state legislators. We will continue to disseminate the ROAD model and share the Workshop and Advocacy materials developed in ROAD with other programs across the nation.
In 2011, ROAD will continue its long-term fundraising plan and finalize the work underway to develop a children's program that will enhance the learning and leadership skills of children who attend ROAD workshops with their mothers. We will continue to develop women's leadership skills and be ready to hire long-standing ROAD members into part-time paid staff positions that will support increased workshop attendance by women and children.
In 2012, we will continue to offer workshops, advocacy and leadership while continuing implementation of the long-term fundraising plan. We will develop the Latina ROAD workshop series that will be facilitated in Spanish and evaluate the progress of the children's workshops, and evaluate the part-time paid staff positions implemented in the previous year.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
ROAD has grown in size every year of operation. In order to successfully accommodate the numbers of women and their children who are seeking to join, we need to be able to expand our staff and hire long-term ROAD members into paid positions so that they can invest the time in developing and delivering programming without losing their ability to provide for themselves and their families. If ROAD were to lose all grant and individual support, the program would only be able to continue in a limited capacity, and would not be able to expand to meet the needs of the community. However, the network of support that ROAD has created is resilient and will continue to provide support and leadership opportunities to women in the community.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$100 ‐ 1000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
In what country?
United States
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Alliance Foundation for Community Health
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
No
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
ROAD's relationships with Harvard Law School and the Boston College School of Social Work allow us to provide advocacy support to the women of ROAD and to educate and influence developing professionals about the complex needs and strengths of low-income communities. We have collaborated with local community-based organizations for outreach, resource-sharing and training support. Our relationship with the Community Affairs Department at the Cambridge Health Alliance has brought ROAD institutional support, supervision, streamlined referral sources for ROAD participants in need of clinical support, and program evaluation. Our relationship with the Annie E Casey Foundation has given ROAD the opportunity to meet, share resources, and build relationships with programs across the nation.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
Approximately 300 words left (2400 characters).
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
ROAD had its genesis in the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Kitchen Table Conversation Project, where low-income gathered weekly from 1997 to 2002. They originally met to discuss the impact that welfare reform had on their lives and over time, they all identified the intersection between their depression and their difficulty in accessing resources to support themselves/ their families as major obstacles they had in common.
Between 2000 and 2003, three women from the Kitchen Table Project all died unexpectedly. Each of these women was in her 40’s and all of them died of causes that are linked both to poverty and depression. The deaths shook the surviving members of the group who became determined to do something to change an environment that is toxic to low-income women and their families.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Four low-income women and a student at Harvard Law School were the core group who founded ROAD and decided that it needed to incorporate social support and learning, practical support and advocacy, and social action. These five women - Joy Walker, Valarie Ifill, Rhonda McPherson, Miguelina Santiago and Angela Littwin - worked closely with a group of local activists, academics and legal and health professionals to create the framework for ROAD and support it in its infancy. The social innovator is not an individual but a group of women who all had experienced significant depression and who were all passionate about social change.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Web Search (e.g., Google or Yahoo)
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
 | 133 weeks agoKatherine Stone said: I really enjoyed reading about the ROAD project and would love to hear even more about it. I'm particularly interested because there ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 136 weeks agoLinda McMaster updated this Competition Entry. |
| 136 weeks agoLinda McMaster submitted this idea. |
