UCS at 50

When an Organization Turns 50

By Ralph Provenza

As birthdays go, turning 50 gets a bad rap.

Having passed that milestone some time ago myself, I know that the energy of youth declines at 50 but knowledge and experience more than compensate - which brings me to the subject of UCS.

This year, United Counseling Service of Bennington County turns 50 and it's a meaningful milestone. In 1958, a merger between the Bennington Mental Health Association and the Bennington Family Service Center put the United in our name.

In those days we provided mostly counseling services to individuals and families with acute mental health issues. We still do that but since then we've grown from a staff of 6 with an annual budget of $13,000 to our present size of more than 300 staff and a budget more than $14 million.

Why the growth? In 1958, half of all hospital beds in the country were occupied by people with long-term mental illness, many languishing in near total obscurity. People with developmental disabilities also lived in isolated facilities, such as Vermont's Brandon Training School, where they lived practically their entire life isolated from the eyes of the public. Children with challenging behavioral issues were mostly sent to out-of-state residential treatment centers.

However, by the 1960s, researchers and practitioners in our field across the country were realizing that we can do better than this. And in Vermont, more so than most other states, we did do better.

We began to transform the treatment of mental illness and developmental disabilities by moving to provide care and services in the community. That commitment was a leap of faith. We had to build the community resources to do the job.

We needed to provide the residential support, job training, and respite care. The community opened its homes to people with developmental disabilities. UCS and others provided counseling and support to their neighbors in need. Community members took care of children needing foster homes or extra support and guidance.

Deinstitutionalization was the name of the movement that brought the care to the community. The results? Since 1958, Bennington County has developed a system of community care for people with mental illness and developmental disabilities that is recognized internationally for excellence.

Our community system has opened up a new world for people coming from the hospitals and institutions. People who had been in a psychiatric hospital for years could move from total dependence on others to independence. With support, those same people are now living by themselves, going to work every day, cooking their own meals, going bowling, paying taxes and essentially living as normal life as possible.

Was deinstitutionalization successful? In 1966, there were 1200 psychiatric patients at the Vermont State Hospital. Now there are 45. The Brandon Training School has been closed for years. In addition to the improved quality of life for our clients, it turns out that treating mental illness and developmental disabilities in the community costs no more. And it was the right thing to do.

We're now at the beginning of a new era for community mental health care; an era that will be characterized by the dramatic improvements we're seeing in certain treatment modalities and by integrating our services better with other people serving institutions such as health care and even the justice system.

You can learn more about the UCS story on our web site, www.ucsvt.org. You'll find our new video showing a few of our staff and clients and the work they do to move ahead. Just click on the video link from the home page to see the full story of UCS at 50.

You'll see that for us 50 is a very satisfying birthday.