The Junction Clubhouse

The Junction Clubhouse is a community-based centre for mental health recovery, which offers members opportunities for friendship, employment, training, housing and social interaction; as well as access to medical, physical health and psychiatric services through a single caring and safe environment.

Clubhouse is an international, evidence based model for mental health recovery. The first Clubhouse, Fountain House, started in New York in 1948 and there are now more than 300 Clubhouses in around 30 countries. Eight Clubhouses are operating in Australia with more in the start-up phase.  Key beliefs underpin the Clubhouse approach:

• Every person with a mental illness has the potential to sufficiently recover from the effects of mental illness to lead a personally satisfying life as an integrated member of society.
• Normalised social and recreational opportunities are an important part of a person’s path to recovery.
• Work, and work-mediated relationships, are restorative and provide a foundation for growth and important individual achievement.[1]
• Membership, belonging and inclusion are at the heart of the Clubhouse approach. Many people living with mental illness have a sense of not fitting in, of isolation and rejection. In a Clubhouse they are known as members - not patients, clients or consumers. To be a member of an organisation means to belong and to have a place where one is always welcome.
• Clubhouses offer a peer-based therapeutic community; a safe non-judgmental place where people with a mental illness can come together and develop relationships through the purposeful, shared work of operating the Clubhouse.  As members, people have both shared ownership and shared responsibility for the success of the Clubhouse. Members and staff meet in open forums to discuss policy and planning issues.  Being a member means being a valued participant and a colleague in a community that is engaged in important work.

Members are always invited to participate in the work of the Clubhouse which includes clerical duties, reception, food service, transportation management, outreach, maintenance, research, managing employment and education programs, financial services and more.

Becoming a Clubhouse member is voluntary and free. The guaranteed rights of membership are:

• A right to a place to come
• A right to meaningful work
• A right to meaningful relationships
• A right to a place to return.