RIVERVIEW VILLAGE INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY SOCIETY – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Analysis details how the Riverview Village proposal for the Riverview Lands and the City of Coquitlam’s Health Campus proposal are, in good part, aligned and complementary.
Far from being in conflict, the proposal for a therapeutic intentional community on the Riverview Lands and one centred on specialized tertiary treatment are, at their core, aligned and complementary.
The proposals are, respectively, an integrated, mixed-population village for the benefit of the seriously mentally ill, being put forward by the Riverview Village Intentional Community Society (RVICS), and the Health Campus proposal prepared by Prof. John Higenbottam and adopted by the City of Coquitlam.
The analysis, prepared by RVICS at the suggestion of the City of Coquitlam’s Riverview Lands Advisory Committee, is attached.
“The two proposals share a profound similarity in their basic impulse and hence in their objective: to help the seriously mentally ill,” the RVICs document begins. “The context for both of them is also the same: the suffering and social dislocation caused by the closure of Riverview Hospital without sufficient provisions for the most seriously affected, discharged into the urban landscape at large. A parallel objective is also shared: that Riverview’s legacy of helping the mentally ill be sustained into the future.”
The analysis goes on from there to detail the symbiosis between the two, clinically, on the ground – the proposed village providing a unique resource in the continuum from acute and tertiary care to community.
“Supporters of the main thrust of the Health Campus proposal can, at the same time, also support the Riverview Village proposal and the idea of a therapeutic community,” The document concludes.
The Riverview Village Intentional Community Society is the former Riverview Village Project, now incorporated as a non-profit society.
Contact: Herschel Hardin, president, 604-922-7153