How to prevent your TC from falling apart
By: MARTIN R. INFANTE
President, SELF
May 2008
It just dawned on me the other day that this coming June, I will have achieved 17 solid years of sobriety. With all these years spent in Therapeutic Community (TC) development, I felt it was time that I contributed some of my experience towards the cause of the TC. This article is dedicated to all my colleagues who are either starting a TC program or have been running one for some time now. I hope that you will be able to relate to some of my experiences and I trust that it will help validate your noble endeavors.
The TC Phenomenon
Establishing a new TC program is the easy part. Sustaining its culture through the years, however, is another story. During its initial years, the program structure can get refined and systems undergo improvement. Within the first few years, one can claim that a program’s culture is finally working well. The trouble is, down the road, things can change radically if you’re not careful.
If you’ve been running your TC program for some time now and you’re noticing that it doesn’t feel like the one you’ve set up a long time ago, you might want to look into some of the areas described below.
Over time, TC systems and rules have a way of getting altered without you knowing about it when you don’t have a systems check program. When this happens, you can lose the very heart of your TC and the integrity of your program could be put in question. The thing is these developments have a way of creeping up on you without warning and one day, you’ll just wake up and wonder what happened.
This retrogressive process is something you’ll notice you can’t hang on anybody. By the time you discover this, you’ll find out it’s been there for months or even years. Its so ghostly that I’ve decided to call it a TC phenomenon.
We at SELF have had to face this predicament at least three times over the last 16 years. We have had to review our organization’s culture repeatedly to maintain the goodness of the program. Though our efforts were rewarding, they were time consuming and we decided it was time to develop a system that checks systems.
(more…)
