RIST Residential Intensive Support Team The Residential Intensive Support Team (RIST) is an intensive residential support program designed to address the needs of individuals who may require intensive but varying degrees of residential support in the transition from hospital to community living. Bridgeway’s Middlesex and Tri County RIST programs are comprehensive, flexible, mobile teams skilled in state of the art interventions that provides person centered recovery and wellness services to people re-entering the community from Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital, and Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Services Include: Assistance in locating permanent housing utilizing state subsidized rental assistance vouchers. Assessment of individual’s needs, strengths, and resources in order to assist in development of wellness and recovery goals. Personal assistance approach with emphasis on education and development of living skills, including apartment management, nutrition, budgeting, personal hygiene, housekeeping, and medication management. Intensive outreach to engage service recipients into mental health, substance abuse, and medical services. Structured, on-going coordination with other service providers. 24 hours per day/7 days per week availability of staff when needed and 24 hour on-call rapid response. Assistance in developing peer and community social supports. Partnership with family/significant others. Career counseling, job seeking skills training and ongoing support to workers and students. A clinically enhanced residential support staff, with a strong peer role, inclusive of a consulting psychiatrist, wellness nurse, housing specialist, and MICA and vocational counselors. Unlike PACT, a comprehensive treatment model in which the team assumes complete responsibility for all treatment and rehabilitation services, RIST, as a housing model, supports individuals’ use of other community mental health treatment, employment and rehabilitation services, as appropriate. The Goals of RIST Include: Independent living integrated within the community; preventing unnecessary hospitalizations; enhancing the persons quality of life and achieving goals such as: Paid work Continuing education Supportive network of friends Improved family relations Living alcohol and drug free Increased recreational opportunities Provision of Best Practices: IMR WRAP Supported Employment Supported Education Co-Occurring Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment Eligibility: Middlesex RIST accepts residents from Middlesex County who are homeless and currently on CEPP status at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital; Tri-County RIST accepts residents from Somerset County, Hunterdon County, and Warren County who are homeless and currently on CEPP status at Trenton, Hagedorn, or Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospitals. Presence of a major DSM Axis I psychiatric illness Need for intensive support in order to maintain independent living Directions to Middlesex RIST      Directions to Tri-County RIST