Note: contents for this page are in-progress.

This is a coaching program for you if you are (any of):

• losing interest in life (but not in crisis yet)
• struggling to get to work & motivate yourself to work (burned out, checked out)
• starting to wonder what the point is
• wondering if you might need mental health assistance (but not quite there yet)
• in transition between an institution and home/community and not sure how you’re going to handle it (rehab, prison/jail, inpatient, medical hospital, nursing home, etc.)
• struggling to come down from the hustle of the pandemic (frontline health workers)

MHANYS CarePath™ is a new coaching curriculum & opportunity to work on wellness & resiliency meant to assist Frontline Healthcare Workers & people transitioning back to community from institutional care environments to build up their supports in the community. The curriculum is founded on the principles of trauma-informed care, wellness, relationships & building resilience.

Introduction

A CarePath™ is a blueprint you create during our work together that will help you achieve better overall health & well-being — by your own individual definition. The MHANYS CarePath™ program provides coaching assistance for 90 days to youth or adults ages 12 & up who need mental health assistance. CarePath™ is small group coaching designed for an individual (the client) to choose a few supporters (other participants), such as family or friends, to join them in their coaching group to create a CarePath™ of their own alongside the individual being coached. This way both they and their supporters also are working on wellness in parallel, and establishing a better bond.

If you're interested in the CarePath™ program, you and each of your supporters will create your own CarePath™; you can think of it as building an individualized plan for how to work towards your own better health. This is what makes MHANYS CarePath™ unique; it recognizes that relationships are central to achieving and maintaining wellness — because when a loved one is not doing well, it also impacts everyone who cares about them.

Our role as your Certified CarePath™ Coach is to support you and your supporters in learning about how wellness operates on a continuum, and to help each participant define your own journey of health & wellness. You and your supporters each create your own CarePath™ and share the experience of learning, selecting support tools to enhance your mind-body health — and as a result, everyone in the group builds their individual resilience together.

How does this work? We will meet for 10 sessions during the 90 day program — about once a week. Most of the sessions will be about 1 hour long, and we will go over aspects of wellness and select tools that we need for the next week. By the end of the program, our goal is that participants will all have more hope, resilience, wellness skills, and that you all can take care of yourself and support each other better.

Scheduling a Pre-Session Meeting

If you'd like an informational meeting, please consider 1-3 supporters who you would like to attend the program with you. If you can't think of anyone you'd trust or rely on to participate with you, we will step into the supporter role as your Certified CarePath™ Coach and do the program along with you.

You can schedule a Pre-Session meeting for the program here. If you use the sidebar button, select the "MHANYS CarePath™ Pre-Session Meeting" option. This is scheduled as a 45 minute meeting to make sure that there's enough time to address questions for you and your supporters, and we'll send you (and your supporters if any) some materials and agreements to look over before the session.

Program Background

MHANYS CarePath™ was originally developed to assist people in transitioning from intensive treatment environments (such as inpatient, intensive outpatient, rehab, incarceration, etc.) and their supporters or family to help rebuild relationships and improve everyone's health.

The program has been adapted for folks who are on the verge of burnout, frontline healthcare workers (including non-medical staff, home health aides, caregivers for aging persons, hospice staff, behavioral health care staff, staff within hospital & psychiatric settings, residential centers, supportive housing, school nurses & school counselors — especially given their work and dedication during the COVID-19 pandemic), and their supporters or families. We're also willing to share this program with others — so it's not limited to those folks.

How We Offer this Program

Rev. Criss is a Certified MHANYS CarePath™ Coach, and due to health restrictions:

• program offerings will be 10 sessions of about 1 hour each online in either a Zoom room, or in a Jitsi Meet fully encrypted video call environment. We can accommodate participants in other ways if necessary.
• Rev. Criss will participate with screen sharing for materials, but will not be on camera. Other participants are welcome to utilize their cameras if they wish to. (This is due to our own trauma, no other reason.)
• Rev. Criss will do their best to accommodate people of all abilities. Please let us know if you have any accessibility needs or concerns.

Program Fees

This is an intensive program over a 90 day period and requires over 10 hours of meeting time: all participants can reach out to the Certified CarePath™ Coach for between-session support, plus administration time. Here's our suggested sliding scale fees, and we're happy to work out payment plans that make sense for participants:

Participants	Full Program Fee (sliding scale) USD
1	$700-$1250
2	$1000-$1800
3-4	$1225-$2100

These fees cover 10 group meetings, and email support for the 90 days (3 months). Some phone support may also be available. Note: We are not available for crisis support: please call 911 for support (in the US), or see our Resources page for information for crisis resources (mostly US resources), or utilize your local emergency support team or national/regional help lines for assistance if you have a crisis situation.

We understand that not everyone has the means to meet our fees, so please do ask about scholarships & partial scholarships if needed — also ask your supporters if they can chip in. Paying part of the fee for the program preserves a partial scholarship for others. We have a few full and partial scholarship opportunities available for this program. We also have set aside 3 full scholarships for frontline healthcare workers in New York State — if you fall into this category and can cover even part of your fees, a partial scholarship remains for others.

More information about this opportunity and program coming shortly. Please see the brochure in the meantime.