THE ORIGINS OF SOCIAL PRACTICE AT FOUNTAIN HOUSE ALAN DOYLE
SUMMARY
Social practice is an innovation in social work know-how created by Fountain House New York for the recovery of people living with mental illness. At Fountain House social practice demonstrates on a daily basis the power of personal input, particularly the input of the members themselves, in the “creation of an opportunity-rich and relationally supportive social ecology” (Doyle et al., 2013) for recovery ends. The article that follows relates the event that launched the search for the term social practice in redefining its methodological approach; the historical context out of which the term evolved (i.e. the “total push” milieu therapy of the 1950’s), and the adoption of the term “social practitioner” to replace “generalist” as the framework to understand how Fountain House assists members to be able to live and thrive in society despite their illness.
THE PROBLEM
I first came to realize that Fountain House needed a new way to describe its approach to working with people suffering from mental illness from a student who was completing her practicum at Fountain House for a master’s degree in social work. I can still recall the morning she arrived for work confused over the public humiliation she faced from a class the previous night and the ridicule she encountered in relating the activities she engaged in at Fountain House. The descriptions of her work with members in arranging flowers and cleaning, normal responsibilities for a staff generalist, was met with incredulous derision as unprofessional and not reflective of rehabilitative techniques that would merit a graduate degree in social work. This was not the first time that basic clubhouse methodology had been 9
