Planning and Implementation

RVICS Consultants provide:

  1. Planning, facilitation, and supervision for key elements of intentional communities for the benefit of those with serious mental illness, and
  2. Strategic planning for such communities from inception to completion and the development of ongoing governance and managerial arrangements.

A project on the scale of an intentional residential community begins with bringing partners and stakeholders together to work through perceived difficulties and to achieve a workable consensus on objectives or, failing that, to develop adequately evolved discrete options for a government decision. RVICS Consultants provide for this process both facilitation skills and experience in inter-group trust building.

The development of the intentional community for the benefit of those with serious mental illness requires in turn the development of a wide variety of elements integral to the creation and functioning of the community.

A mandatory qualifying resource for such work is an in-depth knowledge of serious mental illness, what it’s like to be hit with such illness and to live with its long-term effects, and what people’s needs are to optimize the quality of their lives and to become participating members of the community. RVICS Consultants embodies and makes available such expertise.

Segment projects, with Riverview in mind, include, by way of example, the development of:

  • Clear benchmarks on population mix and on periodic assessments of how the mix is working;
  • A social contract for residents of the community;
  • An intensive education course on serious mental illness for residents of the community who don’t themselves have a serious mental illness and for all staff and other employees working in the community;
  • A training program for teachers of the course in the future;
  • A planning document on the power of community and of the role of community residents in engaging fellow residents with a serious mental illness, helping them to avoid relapse, and helping them to get to clinical care when it’s required;
  • The interface between the village and its community facilitators, on the one hand, and mental health services (community mental health, acute and tertiary psychiatric care) on the other;
  • A managerial structure covering:
    1. community development
    2. housing
    3. the Riverview Lands infrastructure, community buildings and commercial buildings;
  • Program objectives and guidelines for their implementation, including a manual for community facilitators;
  • Employment objectives and implementation, with requirements or recommended targets for commercial businesses;
  • A museum on mental illness, if the concept is approved.

Work on these projects will vary depending on the stage of overall development of an intentional community. Most if it, however, can be done ahead of time, that is ahead of the repurposing of buildings, new construction, and other physical development of the Lands, and all of it can help inform the overall planning process.

We can provide more detail on each of such “segment projects,” on request.