Montessori Lends a Hand to Restoration Project,
Vocational Training is Key in Rehabilitating Mental Health Patients
Nov 23, 2008
If a person hears voices, hallucinates, has trouble concentrating or performing simple daily tasks, there are treatment alternatives available to relieve their symptoms. Yet it is easy to say that some people, by virtue of their disabilities, have a limited ability to take the next step and to learn new skills.
Or is it? Thanks to a current rehabilitative trend, which emphasizes a broad implementation of Montessori practices benefiting the mentally disabled, a lot of people are saying something else entirely. These people are saying,’ Welcome to Restoration Project, Inc. a transitional vocation program based on Montessori principals. It really works.’
The History of the Program
The founder, Eloise Newell, started the project for personal reasons. When her son was diagnosed with schizophrenia during his sophomore year in college, Eloise was simultaneously going through a divorce. She attended a divorce support group where everyone stated a strong desire to go back to school. “That was where,” she said, “I got the bright idea of forming a school.”
Eloise’s own children attended Montessori schools. So, in 1992, it was a logical leap for the former physics professor, whose passion was antiquing, to hire a refinisher, and to found Restoration Project in her own basement with her own son as her first pupil. Within four months, she incorporated Restoration Project.
Today Restoration Project contracts with the state as work adjustment training for mentally disabled employees to refinish and to upholster antique furniture. All of the students suffer from some type of mental illness or head injury.
The Montessori Philosophy
Restoration Project emphasizes the need for each student to find meaningful work as a bridge to his or her place in the world. Students learn refinishing and upholstery skills from trained instructors and from each other. The 5000 square feet of space in the old piano-stool factory is open to the community, who often work side by side with the students, refinishing their own antique furniture.
Kevin Kennedy, an upholstery instructor and a tradesperson with 30 years of experience, says, “Eloise has done something wonderful. Her belief is that the mentally ill can do better.” Kennedy takes his lead from each student, letting him learn at his own pace and encouraging his sense of independence. ”Instruction must be compassionate,” he says, “yet it’s high-level work.”
In the Classroom
Restoration Project vocational training focuses on these areas:
• Adult Education —. Furniture is set up in stations around the room. Each station is a piece of furniture, upon which one or two students work. Students may learn to work in one area of expertise or toward finishing a whole piece of furniture.
• Artistic Awareness — The work ensures that students have something of value to do. Taking a broken down piece of furniture and transforming it through their own hands into a thing of beauty helps mentally ill patients get better.
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy — Students move from the concrete to the abstract performing small simple tasks to refinish and to reupholster furniture and progress to more complex tasks and finally a finished product.
Eloise stresses that her students don’t “get over” mental illness, but they do learn to cope with it, to recover, and to be self supporting. A number of publications have been written about the work at Restoration Project: Psychiatric Times, The Boston Herald, The Beacon, The Boston Sunday Globe, and MetroWest Daily News. RP is also the winner of the 2001 Lilly Reintegration Award for Occupational Therapy.
The Restoration Project facility is located at 81 River Street, Acton, Massachusetts.
